


Tango With Death

by PixelAgora



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Amputation, Death, Destroy Ending, Eventual Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Limbs, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pain, Paragon Shepard (Mass Effect), Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2020-10-19 00:17:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 40,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20648075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixelAgora/pseuds/PixelAgora
Summary: The Reaper war ends and leaves the universe in shambles.Most of the technology is gone, the leaders of many races are dead and chaos begins to spread. Families are torn apart and cast in different corners of the galaxy, unable to get in contact or see each other.Somewhere out there, stuck on an uncharted world, the Normandy’s crew is trying to survive. On the wreck of the Citadel, Shepard is still fighting for his life, unable to let go, but not knowing how to live again either.Among the thousands of soldiers who can finally rest, there are some, whose work still continues, and the assignment is none easier than before.





	1. Chapter 1

_Kaidan_

Kaidan jerked awake and was greeted by a very blurry ceiling, a bright light of the overhead vitals monitoring system and a headache worthy of competing with most pristine torture.

Through very foggy double vision he managed to establish that he was in the Normandy’s medbay. The surroundings were quiet, but the increased hum of the engines made the soldier aware that Normandy was speeding through space in FTL flight.

The Major groaned, sat up with difficulty, looked around and that’s when the memories came rushing back.

A murderous assault on the beacon leading to the Citadel, the fight for Earth, a neverending chase after the goal and blood, so much blood. Worst of all were the screams. The ever-present screams of soldiers who were dying for a very uncertain future.

Running alongside Garrus towards the beacon, then the tank that blew up in front of them and went flying in their direction.

Shepard managed to dodge, but Garrus and himself weren’t quite so lucky. Kaidan blacked out for a split second upon the impact with the vehicle. He was grateful for it too. The pain would have been so much worse otherwise. He woke up just seconds later when Shepard was picking him up off the ground, loading him back onto the Normandy and telling him that…

Kaidan’s thoughts jerked back to the Commander.

Shepard.

Kaidan looked around frantically, snapping back to reality. He hadn’t even noticed that doctor Chakwas approached his cot and was standing by him, a concerned look on her face and all. Kaidan was sure she said something, but he could not for the life of him remember what it was.

The soldier focused is attention on her and with ungodly amounts of concentration defeated the haze and double vision enough to look at her face. His lips formed one word, one name and let it out as a broken, hopeful whisper.

He immediately wished he never asked.

The doctor’s face twisted in a mixture of pain and shame. She hung her head and shook it no. Kaidan suspected she felt guilty.

Hell, everyone here must have felt guilty, some more so than others. It wasn’t like they could have done anything. It would have hurt to let any friend embark on the journey to the Catalyst alone, but the fact that it was Shepard, the person who could make even the most ridiculous and unlikely plan possible, and who undoubtedly would have found a way to accompany any one of them not only to the Citadel beacon but to hell and back, made it so, so much worse.

Kaidan felt a lump approximately the size of the universe forming in his throat, rendering it closed and incapable of making any sounds. He felt warm tears start to run down his face.

He wasn’t strong enough. He should have come after Shepard.

The haze deepened.

He needed to get to Joker, tell him to turn the ship around, do something. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe they still had time to get to Shepard and all of this nightmare of war would finally be over.

_Don’t leave me behind._

He didn’t promise. He couldn’t. Kaidan knew it. But he should have promised.

The Major swung his legs over the side of the medical cot and stood up. Doctor Chakwas was telling him that he can’t get up, that his leg is broken and his ribs are barely holding together, but he didn’t care. All he cared about right now was getting to Shepard. The headache pounded away.

_Don’t leave me behind._

He made his way through the first half of the medbay, almost folded in half. He was supporting his weight on the wall with his right hand, pushing the doctor, who was trying to get him to lay back down, away with his left. She was trying to stop him, but he needed to get to Joker. He needed to turn the ship around, needed to save Shepard. He couldn’t lose him again.

The door opened with a soft swish, revealing James Vega standing in the doorway. Through the fogginess, Kaidan noticed the scrapes on the young soldier’s face.

“Help me put him back on the cot” the Major heard doctor Chakwas’s voice, but it seemed to come from very far away. Kaidan shook his head, to clear it. He was welcomed with more pain at his effort and ringing in his ears.

James walked up to Kaidan and grabbed him by the shoulders firmly, but not enough to hurt.

“Lay down, man,” he said and his voice had a strange echo to it.

“I have to…” Kaidan stumbled over his own words, his voice breaking. James was steadily pushing him back towards the cot, destroying the progress the Major made in his journey to Joker. “Shepard… I…”

“Lay down, seriously.”

The cot was so close again.

“You’re not listening to me!” The older soldier yelled, suddenly annoyed at Vega’s behaviour. Didn’t he understand what he was trying to do here?

As James kept pushing, Kadian didn’t think much, the pounding headache forbidding any logical thoughts from forming. He tore his arm out of Vega’s grasp, swung and punched James square in the face.

The marine’s head flew back, but only for a second. He reacted almost instantaneously, no doubt soldier reflexes kicking in. He grabbed Kaidan by the wrists and tried to immobilise him. He had height and muscle mass on the older marine, but that didn’t stop Kaidan from fighting back.

“Scars, help!” James yelled.

Garrus appeared in the doorway seconds after, just as Kaidan managed to rip one of his hands free from Vega’s iron grasp.

The turian closed the distance between them in silence and grabbed Kaidan’s arm and wrist, gracefully dodging the man’s attempt at punching him too.

The soldiers worked in perfect unison and if the Major wasn’t so focused on regaining his freedom at that moment in time, he would have admired their teamwork and coordination. With Garrus’s help, the men lifted Kaidan off the ground by the arms and slammed his body onto the medbay cot. The impact knocked the air out of Kaidan’s lungs, disorienting him a little, which was no doubt the intention.

“Rápido, Doc,” James said while pinning the flailing Kaidan to the bed. The Major was trying to break free of their grasp, screaming at them that they didn’t understand, that they had to go back for him and how could they be so heartless, but the two soldiers didn’t let up. They definitely had an edge over the migraine ridden mess that Kaidan was at that moment. Both were wearing stone-cold facial expressions.

As a last resort, Kaidan reached for his biotics, to send them flying with a strong biotic kick, but the only thing that happened was an explosion of sharp pain in the base of his skull where his amp was, powerful enough to make him scream.

Doctor Chakwas jumped up to them and Kaidan felt a needle enter his left arm. He tried to jerk away, to no avail. A few seconds later he felt his limbs going limp and it suddenly became more difficult to fight against Garrus and James.

“I… Shepard…” he said and looked at James, searching for understanding. He found pain and guilt instead before the other man turned his head and looked away.

_Don’t leave me behind…_

Kaidan looked at Garrus, feeling his consciousness drifting, getting away from him.

“He never promised,” he said. Garrus’s mandibles flared, as he no doubt stumbled for words, finding none. Kaidan felt a new onslaught of tears roll out from under his dropping eyelids.

“He should have promised…”

The Major didn’t care how pathetic he must have looked at that moment. His limbs dropped, unmoving and feeling very heavy.

He looked at the doctor as the last conscious effort at finding some solace. She seemed to be close to tears herself.

_I can’t lose you again, _crossed Kaidan’s mind, his eyes rolling back into his head. Darkness was waiting for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!  
My name is Jules and I'd be delighted to take you along for this little adventure I always thought would be a part of Shep's and Kaidan's lives after the Reaper war.  
I'm planning to update this fic once a week, to keep it manageable in my quite busy life. I'd love for you to stay tuned for what those biotic bois have coming for them and I'm excited to share this story I've been thinking of for the last two years.  
I sincerely hope you enjoy yourself while reading this humble work of mine and if you like it, please leave a comment or kudos to let me know.  
See you around! :)


	2. Chapter 2

_Shepard_

Shepard snapped back into a world of agony.

As soon as he inched his eyelids open, his entire body exploded with pain like he’s never felt before and he was sure every single bone in him was broken. He was welcomed by darkness surrounding him and he identified that he was laying on a hard surface, resting his back against something angular and cold.

He drew a shallow breath and immediately wanted to scream. His lungs were on fire and the feeling vaguely reminded him of the time when he got spaced during a collector attack on the Normandy and his enviro suit decompressed. The burn was similar to one he felt seconds before entering the atmosphere of the planet below him and passing out shortly after that. The inside of his chest seemed to be full of fluid. John briefly wondered if this is what drowning felt like.

He also wondered why in heaven’s name was he even awake.

John forced himself to take another shaky, shallow breath. He felt his stomach muscles contract, as his body needed to cough up the fluid from his lungs. In the most painful cough of his life, or rather a pitiful gurgle he brought up some viscous, unidentified liquid into regurgitation range and then onto John’s chin and chest.

Then, soldier instincts kicked in.

During his military career, John knew only a few soldiers that wouldn’t check the mobility of their limbs after getting hurt. Taking account of your toes and fingers after flying a considerable distance because of an explosion quickly became second nature for most marines. Knowing whether you’ll be able to pick up that gun you dropped back up could, and usually would decide life or death.

John tried to move his right arm. Slowly, fingers first. Nothing happened. He wanted to turn his head to see why that was, but as soon as the first muscles in his neck constricted to make the movement, his back screamed out in agony and Shepard decided against any unnecessary movements from that point on.

He turned his attention to his left arm and tried wiggling his fingers. Fortunately, his left hand seemed responsive and a minimal movement of his shoulder confirmed mobility in it too.

_Good_, he thought to himself. _If anything, I can still shoot with that arm._

He felt the urge to laugh immediately after that.

_Shoot at what, Shepard? You don’t even know where you are. For all you know, this could be hell. It sure has the potential for it._

The memories of the Catalyst, beacon, a mad dash towards the Citadel and it finally firing all showed up in his mind at once. The images before his eyes flashed to Anderson, too. He couldn’t quite believe that the man he considered to be a sort of a father figure to him was truly gone.

John shook the thought off. Anderson wouldn’t want him to mourn right now, he would want him to get his ass to safety first.

To push away unpleasant thoughts, John focused on his legs. He tried moving them and… nothing. It was as if they weren’t even there. Which wasn’t good, since, in his line of work and the inability to see because of the darkness around him, it was entirely possible his legs were gone, crushed by some piece of debris or some other freak accident. When John pulled all of the concentration he had together and focused on his body, pushing past all the overwhelming, everpresent pain, he found that below his chest, he really felt nothing.

There was his very slow and unnatural breath, barely detectable heartbeat, stomach muscles spasming, trying desperately to expel the fluid from his lungs, mountains worth of pain and then… nothing.

And the problem was, John didn’t know if he should be worried or grateful, for not having to live through this grade of agony as a full-body experience.

As Shepard’s stomach muscles tensed for the umpteenth time, he briefly experienced something wet and warm in the general area.

His soldier instincts told him that whatever it was, it couldn’t be good and he had to check what it was.

Even though he believed his eyes were open and pointed in the general direction of his lower abdomen, he couldn’t see a thing. The thought of using his biotics to create some light crossed his mind, but John knew that being this weak, any further fatigue could prove fatal for him. He opted to try and use his omnitool instead.

Shepard moved his left arm, which was honestly more of dragging it along the ground to inch it closer to his body, and at that moment, defeating the Reaper on Rannoch seemed like a walk in the park compared to this. After some excruciating pain, weak grunts and feeling like his chest is going to turn inside out, he managed to bring his arm close enough to light the omnitool and inspect his stomach.

The device flicked on after a while of fidgeting. It was badly damaged, flashing on and off. John tried to activate the comm channels or send a distress signal, but the network was dead and the device displayed an offensive “no connection” message on its screen. It also provided very little dim, orange light, but it was just enough for John to see what the problem with his abdomen was. He saw a big piece of metal sticking out of his left side. The metal piece must have gotten dislodged when John coughed and was causing some minor bleeding around it. John willed his hand to move some more and placed it loosely on an area where the bleeding seemed to be the heaviest, in an attempt at stopping it some.

It wasn’t big and didn’t seem to go very deep into his body, but it was the sum of everything that happened to Shepard after blowing up the damn Catalyst to pieces that made it seem surreal, tragic and somehow funny at the same time.

On one hand, he was furious that he was this badly hurt. Despite the knowledge that he should feel this way, as any normal sentient being would, he was amazed at himself that he experienced that emotion. During the war, he had so little time to do anything that he stopped paying any attention to his body, above what was absolutely necessary, until getting hurt during missions didn’t seem unusual or psychologically uncomfortable anymore. After being brought back to life by the Lazarus project, John found it difficult to relate to his body, seeing it as just as suspicious as anything else Cerberus did and in moments of high stress, his defence mechanism was to completely disassociate from it. Partially, he didn’t expect himself to feel any different, but something in the way this situation was shaped, the prospect of getting hurt by the thing that was supposed to save them all was offensive.

On the other hand, John found it ridiculous that despite everything he went through, the universe just wouldn’t let him rest. That even after blowing up a giant space station against all wishes of, what for all he knew was a Reaper puppet created for the sole purpose of making him feel guilty for wanting everyone to live a Reaper-free life, he found himself awake once again.

Shepard shut off the omnitool, not wanting for it to fully break down, in case he needed it later, and closed his eyes, feeling as if he was covered by a led blanket. Everything about him felt heavy and unnatural.

Having some time on his hands now, ironically probably for the first time since the assault on Earth all those months ago, he weighed his chances at surviving this situation. He was laying on a concrete slab, possibly bleeding to death, trapped in a wreck of the Citadel which could lose atmosphere and gravity at any moment, with no ways of contacting anyone for help. He judged his situation as somewhere between “very poor” and “fucking stupid”. He didn’t predict himself a peaceful death and always expected he’d die like his father, killed in action, fighting the good fight. Obviously, the complicated nature of everything he did seemed to be in the job description and he supposed dying would also be influenced by it. He never wished to suffer before parting with this world, getting his suit depressurized and burning in the atmosphere once was bad enough, but he reluctantly admitted to himself that this is what it would have to be.

_It’s gonna be what it is._

Shepard winced at the thought.

Kaidan.

His mind jumped to all of the painful memories, all of the times John almost lost him, all those times he did lose him and had to fight tooth and nail to get him back and all of those moments when he thought he would never see Kaidan again. But among all the bad, there was the good, too.

John admired the kind of man Kaidan was. Always calm, supportive, collected. He had his emotional life figured out and knew how to navigate difficult situations. Besides, his self-control was nothing short of incredible. After John died on the SR1, Kaidan picked his life up and became one of the most decorated biotics in the Alliance.

In their relationship, they didn’t use each other as crutches. They supported each other, leaned on each other, sure. But none carried the other in unhealthy ways and John appreciated the crap out of that, for such short a time as it had lasted. The only regret he had was that he wasn’t given more time he could spend with Kaidan, just doing normal things, things usual couples did.

He sighed, then coughed, body aching all over.

Maybe he wasn’t meant to have a normal life. His mother always told him that he couldn’t keep in one place, even as a kid, and if his current situation wasn’t the greatest proof of that, he didn’t know what was. He briefly wondered if she survived the final assault on the Reaper forces. As a Rear Admiral tasked with protecting the Crucible project, it was entirely possible her ship didn’t make it out of the clinch.

Thinking about people he could have lost was painful. During the war, he knew he was putting them all at risk, but it seemed necessary at the time and they were all willing to help out in any way they could. Even Kaidan, that stubborn ass, after getting hit in the face with a tank still wanted to go with him to the beacon.

Now that the war could finally be over, Shepard wondered how many of those, who he promised a normal life to, lived to experience it. He pondered how many of them he failed, not being fast or good enough on the delivery of that promise.

He felt immense guilt, not just for not knowing what became of those he put in harm's way, but also for not getting them to safety fast enough.

And despite wanting to be grateful, wanting to cherish what he had and remember the people he knew for their heroism and devotion, all he could seem to think about was how guilty he felt for dragging them into it all, for pulling them away from their families and lives, just so he wouldn’t feel so alone in his journey of shifting the outcomes of the battle for the universe in their favour. And he felt so incredibly selfish for it. Selfish and ashamed, that he wouldn’t get to apologize to his crew, or anyone, ever again. It was one thing to lay down his own life for a very uncertain cause. It was a whole another matter to give away the lives of others.

And, as he laid there, on a concrete slab stranded somewhere in space, feeling weaker with every passing second, with his limbs beginning to tingle, he promised himself that in the unlikely event of him living through this, he would never stop apologizing for all of the suffering he caused those he loved the most.

As his consciousness lost grasp of the last threads of reality, and he slid off the face of the universe into the darkness again, he felt the wreck of the Citadel begin to shake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter published and I sincerely hope you enjoyed it.  
I've got big plans for both my biotic boys and I'm excited to share them with you :)  
If you're liking the story leave a comment or kudos to let me know.  
Until the next one!


	3. Chapter 3

_Kaidan_

Kaidan opened his eyes again and was welcomed by the same sight as when he was last conscious. He still felt weak, but whether it was because of his injuries or doctor Chakwas’s display of vigilance earlier, he couldn’t tell.

He sighed audibly and rubbed his eyes with his hand, but didn’t make any attempt at getting up. His head still hurt, but the throbbing died down a little, replaced by a pressure in his temples that felt what Kaidan always imagined having your skull crushed by a vice felt like, and with his extensive migraine history this pain was very manageable at this point in his life.

Doctor Chakwas was in the medbay with him and got up from her desk upon hearing him wake up. She approached his cot with a stern look on her face and a shot applicator in hand.

“Now, Major,” she said while checking his vitals on the monitor above. “Are you going to refrain from doing anything silly, or should I use this again?” She pointed to the applicator.

Kaidan felt very self-conscious and silly all of a sudden.

“I’ll behave,” he said, voice rasped beyond its usual state. The doctor handed him a glass of water and he sat up slowly, taking note of his very painful ribs and right leg from the knee down. He took the glass with one hand, pinching the bridge of his nose with the other, eyes closed.

It was all so messy. Shepard was gone, Kaidan slept through most of the immediate aftermath mostly due to his own stupidity and he didn’t even know the current situation.

Then it hit him.

Since Shep was no longer… aboard the Normandy, Kaidan became the highest-ranking officer among the crew, which meant he was to take charge of it. Not that he didn’t outrank John before, but when it came to fighting the Reapers, experience came before rank. And John had more experience than anyone ever should in that regard.

With this new responsibility, he realized he needed to behave as a commanding officer should. The thought immediately followed by the realization that he had no idea how to do that, since the only time he commanded a crew of a warship was after the Normandy was attacked by the collectors. After… after John…

He shook the thought away and realized that doctor Chakwas was still staring at him.

“How are you doing, Major?” She said, voice softer now. He didn’t look at her at first, not wanting to lie, but unwilling to say the truth either. He let the silence speak for him instead.

“I’m sorry Karin,” Kaidan said quietly after a minute, taking a sip from the glass and setting it aside, straightening his back to look at the doc’s face. She seemed very tired. He suspected he himself looked none better. “I behaved like an ass.”

Her expression softened completely now, the previous harshness making space for the warmth he always saw there, whenever he’d come to the medbay for painkillers for his migraines or to lay down on one of the cots with dimmed lights for a couple of hours.

“It’s quite alright, Kaidan” she almost whispered. “I understand.”

And that was all the pain lodged deep into Kaidan’s heart needed to start acting up again.

He felt his eyes watering and took a sharp breath in. He knew he couldn’t look like this in front of the crew, but he couldn’t stop the pain, along with the memories, from flowing in and opening this void in his chest that first opened over three years ago, which he had hoped to have filled up by now.

If Shepard was truly gone…

It took all of his mental strength to push the thought away.

There will be time for that later. For now, he just needed to keep himself busy with whatever the crew needed, to do something that’ll stop him from thinking about the whole situation.

“Now,” Karin said, looking at some of her notes displayed on a datapad. “Before you go, I should probably mention that you should not use your biotics under any circumstances.”

Kaidan gave her an inquisitive look. She nodded.

“Your amp was badly damaged.”

“Again,” he said, not really a question by this point, the irony of the situation almost palpable. It was times like this that made him really consider an upgrade.

“Again,” she confirmed, smirking slightly. “Using biotics at this time could have fatal consequences for you. I did what I could but I am no miracle worker, especially with the limited equipment we have aboard the Normandy.”

“Well… Thank you for letting me know, doctor.”

He got up, minding not to put too much weight on his right leg and spoke, trying to control his voice as best he could:

“EDI, status report.”

Nothing happened. Kaidan blinked, confused.

“EDI?” He tried again. No answer.

He looked at doctor Chakwas who stood there with an unreadable expression on her face. He pointed to the ceiling and raised his eyebrow. The doc sighed in resignation.

“We lost contact with EDI a while ago,” she said quietly. “Almost as soon as we jumped into FTL, she stopped responding.”

Kaidan mulled a swearword in between his teeth and shook his head lightly.

“I’ll go the bridge and see what the situation is,” he said and stepped forward, stopping dead in his tracks right before the door. He looked over his shoulder at Kairn, who was in the process of reaching over her desk for a bottle of blue liquid. Her hand shook slightly as her fingers neared the glass, but she made no further movements and seemed like she was weighing things in her mind. After a while, with a decided look, she shook her head and straightened back up, looking at the bottle from a distance with a strangely knowing look.

“Doctor” Kaidan said gently, suddenly feeling like he intruded on something only she understood. Karin snapped back to reality and looked at him. “Thank you,” he said and walked out of the medbay.

He looked to his right.

Liara and James sat at the mess table, James’s back to Kaidan. They weren’t talking and Kaidan noticed Liara’s blank expression as she stared at the wall in front of her. Her face was puffed and she looked like she was crying.

As soon as she heard the medbay door open, she looked at Kaidan. She clearly tried controlling her expression but she was never very good at it and her face immediately showed all sorts of pity and pain Kaidan was not prepared for.

Liara got up and approached him. She hugged Kaidan and sighed, gripping his back firmly.

Kaidan hated emotions like this. His chest immediately started feeling heavy again and he had to focus all his attention to not think about the situation. He knew Liara needed it, in many ways she was the closest person to him of the Normandy’s crew in the last couple of months and Kaidan wanted her to feel better, but he didn’t know how to. He wasn’t much of an “emotions” kinda guy.

He patted Liara’s back with one hand gently, trying to do something other than just standing there. His form remained stiff and unmoving apart from that and his eyes locked onto the wall next to Liara’s office.

After a moment, Liara let go of him without a word. She looked up at him, her face wet from tears again and Kaidan cursed himself in his mind for not realizing she was crying. The Asari didn’t say anything, she just turned around and walked back to her office. The lock buzzed, indicating the door was sealed shut.

James was still sitting there.

Kaidan felt horrible for what went down earlier. He walked up to James, leaned on the table and put one hand on James’s shoulder in an attempt to get his attention.

“Hey,” the Major said. “Thanks for taking care of me back there” he looked at James’s face and saw the bruise over his left cheekbone, no doubt from the punch. “Sorry about that” Kaidan pointed to it. “I was an ass.”

James straightened out in his chair and looked at his new commanding officer. He didn’t smile, but his voice wasn’t tense when he spoke:

“No hard feelings, Major. I get it.” Some amusement flickered in his eyes at a brief thought, before disappearing back into the stone-cold expression he liked to wear under stress. “Not the first time I got punched for following orders.”

“Yea, well, I don’t want you to start thinking I go around abusing people for doing their job.”

James chuckled.

“Trust me, Major, I’ve seen you lose at poker enough times to know what you’re made of. Like I said. No hard feelings.”

Kaidan patted his shoulder and let go.

He directed his steps towards the cockpit. On his way there he only encountered Traynor, who looked at him with the same expression Liara did, this time however she offered consoling words. Or at least, an attempt at them.

Kaidan listened to her ramble about how sorry she was, how awful he must feel and how she hoped everything will be alright. She didn't right out say it, but she seemed to treat the situation as if Shepard was already dead and Kaidan didn't understand her lack of faith in the man. He didn’t want to interrupt her, though. He knew she and Shepard became quick friends. But her words did nothing to console him.

It was exactly the kind of talk Kaidan couldn’t stand after the Collector attack. People all seemed to think they knew exactly what it was like to lose a man like Shepard. They all moved on with their lives, too, and expected him to do the same. And Kaidan wanted to, desperately, but he knew that moving on was just not something he did easily. And he was well aware that this time, whatever the outcome, he might not be able to ever move on again.

The thing was, he didn’t want to, either. He couldn’t, not without knowing that Shepard was truly gone.

He excused himself from Samantha, saying he needed to get a status report from Joker. She looked defeated and ashamed, but he couldn’t muster up the strength to care.

Joker was sitting in silence in the pilot seat and acknowledged Kaidan’s arrival at the cockpit with nothing but a quick glance.

Both men stared forward into the FTL tunnel as they spoke.

“How are you, Joker?” Kaidan asked. Joker snorted, not one bit amused.

“How am I? _How am I? _We’re flying light years away from the only place we should be in right now, getting chased by some kind of energy pulse nobody understands, EDI is down, you, the supposed commanding officer, were asleep for the last six hours and the best you got when you finally come up here is _“how are you”_?”

He turned around along with his chair, giving Kaidan a furious look and the older marine took a step back, surprised.

“Well, if you have to know, I’m just _perfect. Peachy”,_ he finished.

“I didn’t mean to…”

“Yea, yea” Jeff interrupted Kaidan, trying to control his anger and turning back around. “None of you asses meant to, but it’s always us left cleaning it up.”

Kaidan looked at him.

“I understand you’re under a lot of stress, Joker,” he said sternly, trying to muster up some kind of commanding officer attitude “but this isn’t the time for this. What’s the status?”

Joker snorted once again and Kaidan had no idea how John ever dealt with him. He felt a huge wave of dislike for the pilot filling his mind.

“We never seem to have time for this. We haven’t had time for this for four years. When will there be that time?” He said, not expecting an answer. He quickly followed with information Kaidan was looking for. “We’re somewhere in space. I can’t give you an exact location, because our maps are dead. Actually, everything is dead. Garrus, Tali and engineer Adams have been working their asses off when you were out, just trying to keep us alive and afloat. How was sleeping, by the way? Heard you had a great nap back there.”

He shot Kaidan a vicious look and the officer had just about enough of his attitude. He didn’t understand Joker’s anger but he didn’t really care for it. If they were to survive, they had to work together and he needed to put Joker in his place.

“Mind who you’re talking to,” he said, voice ice-cold, stern expression on his face.

Joker turned around, mouth open again, red on his face, ready to shoot back with a riposte, but something in Kaidan’s behaviour must have changed his mind. He turned back around and swiped his fingers across the Normandy’s controls.

“We’ve been in FTL flight for seven hours now. Our location is unknown. For all we know we could be nearing…” his voice trailed off, as he scanned the controls inquisitively. Suddenly, his eyes widened in shock and his hands danced across the screen.

“Oh shit!” He exclaimed.

Kaidan instinctively braced himself against the handlebar over his head.

The Normandy dropped out of FTL flight and what Kaidan saw made his blood chill in his veins.

A surface of what looked to be a lush green planet appeared in front of them and was approaching very fast. The whole ship began to shake as the Normandy entered its atmosphere at a very steep angle and sped towards the inevitable crash.

“Shit, shit!” Was all Joker could say at that.

Kaidan's arm muscles strained, trying to keep him upright behind Joker, his knuckles no doubt going white from gripping the handlebar. In his mind, he sent brief thanks to whoever had the forethought to put it here.

The ship dove further, nose-down, and Joker was trying desperately to level it off and possibly land it.

The Normandy’s belly nicked the tips of the trees after a few seconds. The hull was moaning with strain, temperature and sudden change of gravity. Suddenly, something caught them on the underside of the ship and the Normandy went flying sideways, ricocheting to the left, towards a hill in the distance at a practically ninety-degree angle.

Kaidan’s body hit the ceiling and the sudden impact made him let go of the bar, which sent him flying through the cockpit at the wall to his left. He tried grabbing on anything he could find and his hands locked onto what he believed to be the weapons system’s main control panel. He was hoping not to press anything crucial accidentally.

Joker was swearing, more creative words flying out of his mouth with every passing second.

The hill neared, appeared under then and for a second it seemed they were going to clear it when suddenly, the ship hit something, spun around in mad speed and came to a halt.

Kaidan let go of the panel and flopped on the ground. He picked himself up immediately and walked, or rather hiked up to Joker since the ship was still at a steep angle to check on the pilot.

Joker was folded in his seat, gripping his stomach and moaning faintly.

“Joker,” Kaidan said with a rasp. “Joker, how are you?”

The pilot responded with another moan.

“Where does it hurt?”

Jeff pointed to literally all of his body. At least his sense of humour was still intact. Kaidan reached into the pocket of his slacks and pulled out a packet of medigel, holding onto Joker’s chair with one hand, practically hanging.

“Come on,” he said, showing it to Joker. “It’ll help with the pain.”

Joker snatched the packet and lifted his uniform shirt.

“Help me,” he said and Kaidan caught on after a second. He grabbed the hem of Joker’s blue shirt and pulled it up, to reveal a side of his ribs that looked terrifying. Jeff was always on the skinnier side, having little capacity to move or exercise, but Kaidan has never seen him shirtless.

The pilot’s ribs looked massacred, thicker in many places and thinner in others. Joker winced as he smeared medigel on his ribs and chest.

“I swear I broke all of them,” he said through gritted teeth, trying to relax in his chair.

“Sit tight,” Kaidan said, letting go of the seat and falling down to land in an awkward position. “I’ll get the doctor.”

Joker laughed faintly.

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”


	4. Chapter 4

_Shepard_

The second time Shepard woke up on the remains of the Citadel was even worse than the first, which shouldn’t have really surprised John, taking his track record of overcoming the impossible.

He moaned almost soundlessly, his dry throat refusing to make any major sounds. He was very thirsty.

Not much time must have passed from his last passing out because the Citadel was still shaking, increasingly so with every passing second.

John’s arms tingled, the feeling spreading towards his neck, causing his head to swim in an unpleasant feeling of lucidity. On one hand, it wasn’t good. Shepard was sure the state he was in was directly caused by blood loss and weakening of his organism, but on the other, he couldn’t stop feeling at least a little grateful for the pain subsiding.

The metal wreck he was on shook more and John felt sweat pearling on his forehead before he realized the temperature of the air around him was rising slightly. It took him a while to piece the facts together.

The Citadel was in Earth’s close orbit when the reapers attacked, to give the Crucible the best shot at taking all of the dark space bastards out. The blast of the beam must have created outward force, which then propelled the Citadel in the direction of the planet until it caught some of Earth’s gravity. John suspected, that the wreck of the space station was beginning to enter the atmosphere of Earth right about now.

He panicked momentarily.

First of all, he had no desire to reenter any atmospheres without proper spaceships surrounding him ever again. Secondly, the Citadel was huge. Kilometres long to be exact and very heavy, and John knew that it took much smaller asteroids than that to completely wreck the planet. If the Citadel were to plummet onto the surface of Earth at full speed, the consequences could be dire. For other people that is, seeing how John would not get the chance to experience any of it since he’d end up cooking alive in this ginormous space castiron pan.

He decided right then he had to do something.

He willed himself to get up and at the peak of his heroic action, he managed to move his torso maybe a couple of inches. His head immediately began spinning at the exertion.

_Is this what it’s gonna be? _He thought to himself, dizzy, feeling like he was going to be sick. _Did I survive all this time, just to be part of the thing that will end up wrecking the home planet?_

Shepard, possibly for the first time in his relatively short life, experienced the feeling of utter helplessness. Sure, working with the council sometimes felt like facing a squad of very angry Batarians blindfolded and with one arm tied behind his back, but it was never like this. At least then he could move his legs. That was definitely one of the most significant advantages over Shepard’s current situation.

John’s subconscious, so ridden with anxiety, stress, and self-doubt as of late, would probably have said something about irony, not being able to save them all and trying and failing, as always, but that would require for it to still be present. Shepard’s eyelids fluttered closed and his head dropped to his chest.

In his last, dramatically tiring effort to change something, he flicked his omnitool on. He wasn’t counting for a rescue, not really. It was one of those things he supposed people did when they feared death and didn’t want to let it win with them fully. Shepard wanted to have the satisfaction of not having given up, so when he meets Garrus at that bar he promised, they’ll have something silly to laugh about.

Seconds later, his mind was gone.

His breathing stopped.

_Six hours earlier_

Jack climbed over a pile of rubble on the west side of London. Among some dust and minor concrete pieces, she spotted a hand sticking out that gave out a faint, biotic glow. This image made her head spin with memories of Rodriguez’s stupid ass and a pile of husks, but she shook them off. This wasn’t the time.

Instead of thinking, she positioned herself, her leg propped up against a more sturdy piece of armed concrete and grabbed the limb with both her hands. The hand reciprocated the grasp.

Jack pulled as hard as she could and from under a level of dust, scraps of metal and pieces of the nearest building, a very dirty, dazed teen emerged.

“Alright Prangley,” Jack said as soon as she recognized the kid. “Off your ass and on your feet.”

Prangley chuckled, coughed up some dust and jokingly shot back with:

“Screw you, ma’am.”

She smiled. Some things haven’t changed and despite never suspecting herself of this level of sentimentalism, she hoped they never would.

Establishing that his humour came out of the battle unscathed, she looked the teen over, checking for injuries. He took the inspection with patience, standing relatively still, looking around every once in a while with an underlying level of fear in his eyes.

“So,” he said finally when he couldn’t take the suspense anymore. Jack was just checking his amp. It looked fried, quite like the tech on the rest of the kids she found. “Did we win?”

The mix of fear and hope in his eyes made her burst out laughing. She then grabbed him by the shoulders, pulled him off the pile of rubble onto the street and squeezed him in her arms, lifting him off the ground ever so slightly.

“Sure as hell we won!” She yelled and pointed in the direction of a group of buildings that were still standing. “There’s a dead fuuu… uh, bad guy, behind those. And it’s huge!”

Prangley laughed and looked around.

“Where are the others?”

“Looking for the rest of the team. We got a bit separated after the Crucible fired.”

The kid looked worried again.

“They’re fine, right? All of them?”

Jack looked at him, the worry and care visible in his features. She walked up to him again and hugged him. She was never this affectionate with her students before, but damn it, the situation warranted it. Those kids were her family. She needed them to know that she’d stand by them every step of the way, even though it seemed the toughest part of their path was over.

“War is shitty,” she said and he hugged her back. Jack brushed some dust off of his hair. She was still taller than him. “We got lucky. Rodriguez only broke her arm and it looks like Brown is gonna lose an eye.” She pulled away from the kid and mustered up a smile. “We haven’t found everyone yet, but we’re hopeful.”

She turned around and started walking in the direction of the still-standing buildings, motioning Prangley to follow her.

“Chin up, soldier,” she said cheerfully. “We gotta meet with the rest and find someone who’s in charge of this mess.”

Jack looked up and eyed the remains of the Citadel visible in Earth’s orbit, looking incredibly broken up and a bit close for comfort.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

…

Major Coats was in the middle of ordering some servicemen around to clear off crucial roads when Jack showed up with her students.

They ended up finding everybody and somehow, thanks to a miracle no less, they were all fine, with only minor scrapes and bruises to complain about. Rodriguez’s arm was definitely broken, possibly in more than one place, but she was taking it well. Jack suspected it was equal parts the painkillers in the medigel she smeared her forearm with and the self-control she gained over the last couple of months.

“Hey!” Jack called out to the Major, which caused him to turn around. She had to give it to the man, he didn’t look the least bit startled, keeping up his ironic smirk plastered on his face at all times. It was very effective at two things: hiding his emotions perfectly and pissing people off. “Boy scout! We’ve got a wounded kid over here!”

Rodrigues lifted her eyes off the unicorn tattoo on her forearm and yelled:

“Hey! I’m not a kid!”

Jack ignored her with a smile. She stood in a confident stance, with her hands cramped into fists and resting on her hips. She waited for a response.

Coats looked her up and down, the smirk never leaving his face.

“And who the fuck might you be?” He finally asked. His thick British accent made him even less likeable in Jack’s eyes. But, as much as she didn’t like him, she had to give it to the man: he had balls. When she and the students got stationed with one of the support teams on the other side of London, the word of Coats spending three days in the Big Ben has already reached all of the other soldiers and they could not shut up about it. Respect for his actions, though, did not warrant pleasantries.

“Support biotics, currently with zero biotics available.”

The soldier looked exasperated for just a split second and Jack felt satisfaction filling her heart, even if it was for a stupid reason. In reality, there was very little to be satisfied with, but she ran with it.

“Don’t tell me your amps got fried too” he said.

She nodded.

“Bloody fucking damn it.”

She burst out laughing.

“Well,” Coats said, rolling his shoulders and stretching his neck. He looked hella tired, much like the rest of the people around. “No point dwelling on it, though I counted on an easy fix for some of our roadblocks.” He motioned at her to follow him and she nodded at her students to do the same.

Jack closed the distance between herself and the Major by jogging up to him. He was already back to his duties, ordering people around and organizing some form of shelter for all wounded, hungry and homeless.

“Alright, let’s find you something to do,” he said, more to himself than her. “I think the western barricade needed some-”

“Actually” Jack interrupted him. “I was looking to find someone in charge.”

Coats stopped in his tracks and shot her one of those “I am a very important marine with so much authority” look. Jack was practically immune to those. A couple of months with Shepard on the Normandy and one got used to it.

Well, at least she did. She knew Shepard meant nothing by those and usually meant well.

And when he did that, well… That usually meant his absolute damnest.

“I am the ‘someone’ in charge, missy. And if you don’t like that, well, you can fu-”

“Major,” she said with an ironic smile. “Chill out. Didn’t mean anything by it. We’re here to help.”

He looked at her with a displeased facial expression but didn’t seem like he was going to blow up again. Jack understood he was on edge, much like everyone else around. She also caught on to the fact that if he could, he would have denied her help. But, the thing was, he couldn’t. He had a metric fuckton of work to do and not enough men. It was the mark of the times.

Jack looked up at the Citadel again, concerned and annoyed. He seemed to have picked up on her thoughts. His eyes followed hers to the wreck.

“Looks like it’s a wee bit close, eh?” He quipped, smirk returning.

“Hell yeah it does,” she said, catching some of his nihilistic humour. “Think we should do something about it?”

Coats let out a chuckle, his lips stretching into a genuine smile and it was like seeing a unicorn in hell. Those things just didn’t go together in the slightest.

“You know, a Krogan wouldn’t stop yapping away about it a while ago.”

“So whatcha tell him?”

His face reverted back to its previous form. This time, though, there was a bit more concern visible. The Major shrugged.

“That even if we wanted to, we can’t do squat. The station is up there, we’re down here and everything that could have taken us to it is fried or crashed.”

Suddenly a cheerful, bellowing laughter reached their ears from their left and turned their heads rapidly, startled by the noise.

An incredibly tall, muscly Krogan covered almost head to toe in dried blood and dust walked out from between some trucks Coats and Jack were standing next to and approached them with a confident stride.

“Wrex!” Jack yelled, genuinely happy to see the old man. They met through Shepard on Tuchanka, during Grunt’s rite of passage. They had a biotic duel afterwards. She won. He took it well. It was loads of fun and she was now fond of him. “Coulda sworn you were gonna go soft and not make it out this time around!”

Wrex laughed and landed a powerful pat on her back which she almost took with pride. Almost.

“I’m hard to kill,” he said. He then looked at Coats. “Heard you were looking for transport up to the Citadel?”

Coats nodded.

“Well,” Wrex bared his teeth in a terrifying, Krogan take on a proud grin. “I could help you arrange that.”


	5. Chapter 5

_Kaidan_

The crew instinctively gathered next to the galaxy map on the Normandy’s main deck.

Kaidan walked past all of them, having to look at their faces that without fail had an expression of pity and sadness painted on them. Kaidan’s relationship with Shepard was well known among the crew. Despite having never discussed the feelings between him and Shep with anyone on board, the situation became very obvious a couple of weeks after their sitdown on the Citadel at Apollo’s. Especially when Kaidan would make his morning trips from John’s cabin back to the crew deck.

He suffocated a pang of pain in his chest, by trying to focus on other tasks at hand. He needed to find doctor Chakwas so she could take a look at Joker.

On his way, he passed by Gabby, who shot him this pained stare and opened her mouth to say something, no doubt apologetic or seemingly supportive, reaching with her hand to touch his shoulder.

Thing was, she was a great, smart girl. And Kaidan was sure that just like others, she meant well. But that didn’t change how he felt. It didn’t change his inability to take pity. Didn’t change his refusal to accept John could be… was… gone.

He didn’t stop when Gabby tried to grab his attention. Instead, he made a bee-line for Garrus, who he noticed coming up the emergency ladder. He was happy to see the Turian for a simple reason - he never learnt the differences in Turian facial expressions so Kaidan didn’t have to worry about pitiful stares from him.

“Garrus,” he said loudly, feeling Gabby’s fingers brush his shoulder as he walked past. The crewmembers turned their heads towards him and made space as best they could so he could reach the Turian.

“Kaidan” he responded. “What’s going on?”

The marine reached him and leaned against the side of the galaxy map, folding his arms on his chest.

“We hit the ground of… a planet” he responded, trying to keep himself professional. “Can’t tell where, though. Joker’s hurt, I need to find the doc.”

Garrus’s mandibles flared as he looked around, over the heads of the others.

“Damn it. Joker’s okay?” He asked, undertones of his voice hissing unpleasantly. Kaidan’s come to learn he did that whenever he was stressed. He nodded confirming.

“He’ll be fine.”

Garrus shook his head.

“We barely held the girl together.”

“How bad is it?” Kaidan dreaded the answer immediately after he asked.

“She’s… gone, Kaidan” Garrus brought his voice to a whisper, looking nervously around, not wanting the others to hear. Adding to their worries wasn’t something either of the soldiers wanted to do. “It’s a miracle we still have lights, the emergency power supply must have come survived.”

“Shit” Kaidan pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

_This is a disaster, _he thought. _We need to go back for Shepard, need to save him and we’re stuck on an alien planet in the middle of nowhere!_

He wanted to know how bad the situation was, but he didn’t have time for a full technical debriefing right now. He had Joker to take care of. “You can’t get her up?”

Garrus shrugged, looking defeated.

“We bearly kept the core from blowing up on us when we crashed. Tali can’t figure out what went wrong.”

“Estimate?”

“Can’t give you one” Garrus dropped his voice a couple of tones, straightening his back. “I’ll keep you updated if we learn anything.”

Kaidan nodded and was about to walk away, but stopped after a few steps and turned around, having thought of something.

“Garrus,” he said again and the Turian’s eyes snapped to the marine’s face. “I need a scan of the atmosphere. We need to know if it’s safe to go out. This ship can’t stay this way.”

The other soldier nodded.

“I’ll check on Joker and get Liara on it right away.”

Kaidan thanked him with a nod and turned on his heel to leave the main deck.

He walked past James who was trying to hike up the tilted emergency shoot. He lifted his eyes at the older marine.

“Ah. Major” he said.

“James” Kaidan rasped. “Get a crew of a couple of people and figure out what got damaged when we crashed.”

Vega’s brows lifted in surprise as he got up from the ladder and stood straight before his new CO. He looked like he wasn’t expecting Kaidan to actually command anything. The expression lived for a split second, though, replaced with James’s will to follow orders at any cost.

“Yes, sir” he shot back and bent down to yell into the shoot. “Estaban!” He yelled.

“What is it, mister Vega?” Reached Kaidan’s ears from below. Cortez got thrown around when the Kodiak crashed back on Earth, but, minus some minor bruises, scrapes, and undoubtedly a lecture from doctor Chakwas, he was fine.

“Need ya to get Buggy and Sparks to help me look for damage.”

Kaidan frowned.

“Figure out if Tali is busy with the engine, first. If she is, leave her to it.”

James raised his eyebrows, leaning against the wall, waiting for Cortez.

“What’s wrong with the engine?” He asked, concern creeping onto his face.

Kaidan sighed.

“Nothing that concerns you, soldier” he rasped at the young marine, his voice cold, command tones firing up again. He knew he should explain, soothe and support. But he was also tired and had no desire for chatting, especially with how unclear their situation was now.

James straightened up and shot Kaidan a quick salute.

“Aye, aye, sir,” he said, his face tensing back into the unreadable mask he had on back in the mess hall.

Being stressed out to hell, tired with the mood of the situation and beyond hopeless _and still _remaining positive and friendly with the crew was something Kaidan has seen done only once before in his entire career.

The soldier shook his head.

He had no idea how John did it.

…

The crew was in disarray, not knowing what to do with themselves.

It wasn’t for the lack of ability, because all of them were great at showing initiative. It was simply that when Shepard ran the show, he knew when to encourage, bash or gently point in a different direction. Without that subtle touch, the crew felt lost and needed time to get their bearings back.

Kaidan found doctor Chakwas standing at the mess table, tending to a nasty looking burn on engineer Adams’s arm.

“Major,” the man acknowledged his presence and hissed painfully as the doctor wrapped another loop of bandage around the limb. “Good to see you awake.”

Kaidan nodded at him and stood next to them, arms folded over his chest again. He always seemed to fall into that pose. He turned to Karin.

“Joker got a bit rattled when we crashed” he informed her. “He’s fine, put some medigel on his ribs, breathing's normal, but he thinks he broke some. Mind taking a look at him once you got a minute?”

The doctor smiled slightly.

“Of course, Major. I will be with him as soon as I can manage.”

Kaidan nodded again. A few seconds of silence followed. The marine eyed the engineer’s wound.

“What happened to your arm?” He asked, looking at the dressings. Adams’s eyes followed his.

“Ah” he responded. “The core vented when we crashed. Most of it went through the GX12 thermal pipe we had installed about a year ago. If it wasn’t for that small lifesaver, we’d all be radioactive steam, floating in engineering. And all thanks to Commander Shep-”

His eyes darted to Kaidan’s face and the soldier suppressed a sigh, meeting Adams’s panicked stare with a very, very tired one.

“I’m sorry Major, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s fine” Kaidan interrupted his speech before it had the time to gain any momentum.

An awkward silence filled the mess hall.

Kaidan felt like he was suspended in very thick, sticky foam. His limbs felt tired, mind slow and he sensed a black hole opening in the middle of his chest, threatening to swallow all his emotions, along with the will to push forward.

He only felt like that twice in his life before.

Once, briefly, when he found out his father went MIA on earth a couple of weeks ago. It was a short-lived feeling, though, mostly because the circumstances didn’t allow for dwelling back then. He still didn’t know whether his dad was okay. Just one more reason to lose sleep at night - not knowing what happened to the ones you loved. It was the mark of the times, he supposed.

The second time, the one where it took him short of two years to get over, was losing Shepard in Alchera’s orbit. It’s been short of three years since then and, well, he didn’t think he’d ever forget the feeling of looking out the window of the escape pod, searching the starts for any sign that Shepard was still alive, listening to the comm channels, only to find static… It took him years to get over that moment and he knew he’d never be okay. And if he were to lose Shepard again, if he was, in fact, dead, as the crew seemed to believe for some strange reason, because, realistically, how many times can a man come back from the dead after suicide mission after suicide mission… well…

Kaidan gritted his teeth to fight back the tears that were threatening to spill. This wasn’t the place for that.

The soldier has dealt with it once, so he’d do it again, and he planned on doing it the only way he knew how to - by throwing himself into work.

Kaidan pushed himself off the table and stumbled a couple of steps down, succumbing to the tilt of the ship. He cleared his throat and looked around.

He noticed Garrus climbing down the ladder next to the unusable elevator shaft. He walked up to the Turian and waited for him to get his feet on the deck.

“Joker is holding up well,” the Turian said as soon as he turned around and realized Kaidan was standing next to him. “He’s complaining, as usual, but I took it as a good sign.”

The human soldier smiled lightly at that.

“Yeah” he responded quietly. “Good sign.”

Garrus pointed to the wall behind him, the gesture a perfect replica of the one John would mimic while telling Kaidan about how many “calibrations” Garrus was in the middle of during the time they worked with Cerberus. He almost smiled at the memory, even though it hurt like hell to think about.

“I’m going to Liara’s now. Comms are down, couldn’t tell her to work on the atmosphere scan before.”

Kaidan nodded at the words.

“Care to come with?” The Turian asked, mandibles flaring.

The human raised an eyebrow at the question. It seemed very out of character for Garrus to offer anything of the like, apart from an occasional game of poker and it caught Kaidan off guard. After a second of thought, he shook the thoughts away. Everyone was on edge. If this was the way Garrus wanted to deal with his stress, Kaidan was more than happy to oblige. He nodded and they started their hike up, across the mess hall, holding onto the table. It was times like this when every soldier had to appreciate the genius who decided to weld it to the deck.

“By the way” Garrus quipped over his shoulder. “I told Traynor to look into EDI. She should have some answers for us in a few hours.”

Kaidan blinked. He didn’t even think of that, with everything happening around them seemingly at once. He hummed in response, his mind making the unpleasant jump to the realization, that Shepard would have thought of that. Hell, he would have thought of everything.

They reached the door to Liara’s office after a while of climbing. Garrus had to boost Kaidan up to the door frame after which the Major proceeded to brace himself against a wall, pulling the Turian up with a lot of grunting on both sides.

They opened the door manually since the automatic opening system didn’t work anymore.

The view that welcomed them made Kaidan stop dead in his tracks.

“Liara” he whispered.


	6. Chapter 6

_Shepard_

After the Major gave temporary command over London operations to a young Commander named Graham Steckler, Wrex led Jack and Coats between some rubble, manoeuvring between pieces of walls, shrapnel and immobile Krogan tanks.

Jack had her students go get checked into the med centre. The place was a couple of cots set up in a more or less standing building, where a very limited medical personnel was doing their best to aid the wounded soldiers and civilians without complex technology available. From what Jack got a glimpse of, it was a mess, but the teens needed a checkup. Some of them had medical training so she assumed they would eventually end up helping the medics out any way they could. Jack told them she’d come to pick them up eventually, to stay put until she’s back and not do anything stupid. She doubted it could fully be avoided but the kids promised to do their best and that had to be good enough.

Coats was grumpy with the news and Jack couldn’t understand that. Wrex seemed to have an easy solution to the Citadel problem. This day and age, nobody looked sideways at an easy solution.

Except, apparently, Major Coats.

After a couple of minutes, the group led by Wrex arrived at a clearing in the rubble, where a couple of buildings formed a small plaza.

They were up on a hill that overlooked the river. Jack noticed a dead Reaper that was laying in the water, blocking the stream. The sun was beginning to rise as well, first specs of red light bouncing off the waves and the Reaper’s plating and Jack had to admit the view was beautiful. It had that victorious quality to it.

“Done admiring the view?” She heard Wrex call out to her. She turned around and raised her head proudly.

“I think I’ve earned a bit of epic standing over the corpses of my enemies.”

Wrex bust out laughing, a bellowing roar of a powerful Krogan filling the air. Jack liked the old man.

“Aye, that you have. We all have. We showed the fuckers what’s what.”

Jack trotted up to him and the Krogan motioned towards an entrance, or rather, a hole in the front wall of one of the buildings. Jack walked past him and entered.

The ground floor was mostly open and Jack noticed a few Krogan warriors sitting on pieces of concrete they must have brought in from the outside. Some of them were eating something very smelly and dry looking.

In the very back, there was a shuttle that seemed to be the hub of commotion in the building. Krogan engineers surrounded it, along with a couple of humans. They all worked in unison on the corpse of the vehicle that was now taken almost entirely apart, side shielding taken off to allow access to the shuttle’s guts.

There was one human silhouette among them and it seemed especially familiar to Jack. Her eyes widened in surprise. She turned to Wrex.

“You’ve got the cheerleader in here?!”

Wrex laughed at her words.

Jack sprinted up to the workers. She wasn’t thinking much, except for maybe “how did it happen that I’m so emotional when it comes to the Cerberus bitch?”. She grabbed Miranda by the arms, spun her around and wrapped her in an embrace, squeezing hard and lifting the confused woman off the ground.

“Cerberus cheerleader!” She yelled. “You survived!”

Miranda’s realization of who was holding her didn’t take the confusion away. If anything, it added to it immensely.

“Jack?” She asked. “What are you doing?”

She sounded angry, but Jack was almost certain she was pretending. They bonded at Shepard’s party and realized they had more in common than they originally had thought. As soon as Jack set her down, the smile on Miranda’s face confirmed her suspicions.

“Good to see you in one piece, Jack” she quipped, a genuine smile creeping up onto her face. Not so long ago, neither of the biotics believed they could ever harbour any warm feelings for each other. Jack was sure that the reason for the change could be tracked down to something of Shepard’s doing. The man had that quality to him. Bringing people together and making them see that they can actually understand each other was the centrepiece of the boy scout's schtick. Jack didn’t think she’d end up liking him either, but here she was, hoping that wherever the man was, he was happy and healthy.

“Glad to see you’re still kicking, too” she shot back at Miranda. “I see that not even the Reapers wanted you.”

The other biotic laughed, tilting her head back, revealing a set of pearly, picture-perfect teeth.

“I see that your sense of humour is intact. I’m assuming the Reapers didn’t want that either.”

Jack gasped and punched Miranda in the arm playfully.

“Bitch,” she said, grinning.

“Twat” Miranda fired back.

Jack took a step back and let her eyes drift over the corpse of the shuttle.

“Well, this is…”

“Gruesome” she heard Coats’s voice behind her. The man walked up to them and stopped alongside Jack.

“Major” Miranda said and saluted. Of course, the little cheerleader knew everyone in the command chain. The man nodded at her and looked the shuttle over.

“This is what you said could take us into the orbit?” He turned around to face Wrex, who strode up to the shuttle. “Please tell me you were joking.”

Wrex didn’t look like he was joking in the slightest. He walked up to the shuttle and petted it lovingly with his giant hand.

“This baby may not look like much, but it will fly alright.”

Coats looked sceptical and unconvinced.

“And how exactly is it going to do that?” He asked, folding his arms over his chest, resting his body weight on his right leg.

“We already have the main systems working, Major” Miranda piped in. “It will be a couple of hours before we can get the core back online, but it shouldn’t take much more than that.”

Coats shook his head.

“And what exactly makes this shuttle so special that it will fly when all of our other vehicles have been blasted dead?”

Miranda straightened her back and cupped her hands together behind her back. Jack came to understand that it was a gesture made to give Miranda confidence when she didn’t feel fully comfortable with what she was saying. It could have been that she didn’t really know what she was talking about. Hopefully, Coats didn’t realise that himself.

“We believe it could be a variety of different factors,” Miranda said, her voice confident enough. “Our theory is that this shuttle was shielded from the blast by a larger ship, possibly a Reaper, that took the bulk of the force, but it’s pure speculation.”

“Whatever the case” Wrex piped in “it’ll fly. We’ll fly it.”

He looked up, where the wreck of the Citadel through one of the windows.

“It doesn’t feel right to leave Shepard up there,” he said.

It was as if a vinyl record came to a scratching halt for Jack.

“Wait, what?!” She looked between Coats, Miranda and the Krogan. “What do you mean Shepard is up there?!”

Wrex looked at her, confused.

“Well… yeah. He was the one who activated the blast and sent the Reapers back to whatever hole they crawled out of. Who’d you think did it?” He grinned, clearly proud. The Krogan had a weird idea of achievement.

Jack cursed in the nastiest way she knew of.

“I dunno!” She yelled at him. “I thought it fired on its own! Nobody told us!”

She whipped around and looked up again.

“We need to go get him, then!”

She turned back to the others. Their faces displayed varying levels of embarrassment. Well, except maybe for Coats who just looked tired and uneasy, as if he was just remembering all of the more important things he had to do.

“Jack” Miranda spoke in that tone of hers that usually heralded a speech about something unpleasant. Jack’s face twisted in a grimace in anticipation. “When Shepard went up the beacon that took him to the Citadel, I tapped into his vital sign readings.”

“Of course you did,” Jack said. Miranda ignored her.

“They were showing signs of distress and then… as soon as the Crucible fired…” Her voice sounded all choked up, threatening to break. She held her composure well, though, which Jack couldn’t help but notice and admire. “He’s gone, Jack” Miranda whispered.

The other biotic crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head.

“No” she flat out stated. “No. The readings must be wrong.”

Miranda looked at her with an immense amount of pity and closed the distance between them, putting a hand on Jack’s shoulder.

“I know he meant a lot to you. After all that he has done for you, it must be hard-“

Jack swatted Miranda’s hand away.

“It’s not about what he’s done for me. Or for anybody. Or for the universe.” She gave the rest a stern look, stubborn as always. “He’s alive and I know it.”

Coats looked exasperated and annoyed.

“Look at the odds,” he said. “Why would you think that he’s-”

“Because it’s Shepard we’re talking about” she interrupted his speech, not giving a single damn about his rank. He could bite her ass for all she cared. She wasn’t backing down. “And Shepard doesn’t just _die_. I know him well enough.”

Coats looked unconvinced.

“There’s only so much near misses in a single man,” he said. “You can’t know he’s alive based only on suspicion. And we have so many more issues to worry about.”

“Look, I’m not leaving him up there if there’s even a fraction of a chance he’s still breathing.” She raised her chin proudly, ready to fight Coats with all she had. “If you’re looking to stop me, you’re welcome to try. The whole of Cerberus and the Collectors both tried. Look where that got ‘em.”

The Major sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose and looked at Jack and the other two, one by one.

“Look, I’ve got much more important things to worry about right now. Like, for example, how is having one shuttle supposed to solve the issue of the Citadel threatening to plummet down onto the surface of the planet at any moment?”

When the group had no answers for him, he threw his hands out in frustration.

“See?” he said. “We can’t exactly start hauling the damn thing behind one shuttle on a metal wire.”

Miranda’s eyes lit up.

“Not exactly, no.” She looked at Wrex with an unreadable expression on her face. Her lips formed a small smirk. “I’ve got an idea. And I will need your help.”


	7. Chapter 7

_Kaidan_

The room was a mess. Some of the monitors lining the walls got dislodged and fell to the ground, swiping everything in their wake and covering the floor with tiny glass shards. It was hard to say if it was gravity that caused them to go flying or a show of biotic abilities. There was also a considerable amount of paper notes thrown around, most of them smudged and looking rushed. From a quick glance, Kaidan identified that they contained sketches of the Catalyst and the citadel. Glyph’s terminal was inactive and empty. The only active light was located at the back of the cabin, where Liara’s bed was.

The dim ceiling lamp revealed a silhouette of the Asari.

She was sitting on the ground, her back pressed against the tilted bed, her hands surrounding her knees, pressing them to her chest. If she noticed them enter, she didn’t let it show.

Garrus’s mandibles flared. Kaidan assumed he didn’t know what to do.

“Let me handle this,” he said softly and the Turian nodded.

“I’ll give you two some privacy,” he said, turning around. “I’ll wait outside. Let me know if… Just let me know.”

Garrus didn’t wait for a response. He closed the door behind him. Kaidan could hear the Turian lean against the door frame for support. He had that aura of a protector about him and the man was sure Vakarian wouldn’t move by an inch, no matter what happened.

Kaidan crossed the room, being mindful not to step on any papers spread across the floor. Dropped or not, he didn’t know if Liara would need them later and didn’t want to destroy anything.

He entered the Asari’s bedroom and stopped at the archway. Liara sniffled and turned her head away from him.

Her state reminded Kaidan of Shepard. The older marine frequented the Comannder’s quarters during the Reaper War. He would often support him, ease his stress and attempt at being helpful in whatever task needed completing. Shep was never one to express his emotions outwardly. There weren't many situations when the Commander would break or lose composure, but having spent time around him for a couple of months, the Major got attuned to his moods and feelings. The last night before the assault on Cerberus headquarters was much like this. Kaidan wasn’t sure if he’s ever seen anyone quite so defeated as Shep was back then and seeing Liara in a similar state broke his heart. Kaidan figured it was the mark of the times.

He often had to remind himself that despite all of the very serious and dangerous business choices she’s made in her life and was now responsible for, Liara was still not much more than a teenager in Asari culture. Her fascination with archaeology made the beginning of her life difficult. She didn’t spend her childhood like other Asari, who were quite social people, getting to know cultures of the species that currently roamed the galaxy. All of her experiences made for hours of fascinating conversations Kaidan was sure Liara was having very little of, seeing how awkward she tended to be at times.

He found Liara was much like John in other aspects as well. Never the one to talk about her feelings, always ready to help others first, before caring for herself, except for situations where she really couldn't take it anymore.

Kaidan figured that this was that situation.

Everyone knew Liara had warm feelings for Shepard. And for a good reason. The man genuinely cared for her and if circumstances were different, maybe they’d end up in a relationship. The Asari approached her unreturned affection with dignity and maturity, too. She never imposed, pushed or demanded. She prided herself to be one of the Commander’s friends and Kaidan felt she’d do anything to remain one. It was understandable that after losing a home planet, many of her people, and now a close friend, she was left broken and despairing.

“Hey” Kaidan spoke softly, closing in on her and lowering himself to sit down next to her. “Talk to me.”

Liara didn’t respond but also didn’t shut him out. Despite being a responsible, professional businesswoman who had the Shadow Broker’s duties on her hands she always remained open and Kaidan knew that deep down, she craved affection and assurance like everybody else.

“What’s going on?” Kaidan asked, making sure his voice was soft and calm. He raised his arm as well, touching the Asari’s shoulder, offering an embrace.

It wasn’t long before she caved in.

Her body pressed against the Major’s side and she wrapped her arms around his waist, clinging to him tightly. He returned the hug, surrounding her shoulders with both his arms. She didn’t cry anymore, though, just sat there, sniffling every once in a while. Kaidan let her keep up the silence for a couple of minutes. He didn’t want to scare her or make her feel pressured. Whenever she felt comfortable with speaking was okay with him.

“I am…” she whispered after a while, voice braking. She didn’t look at him, staring at the wall in front of them instead. “…so sorry for… your loss.”

Kaidan didn’t respond, feeling himself getting choked up. He locked his eyes with the spot on the wall she seemed to be looking at.

“He was such a good man… and-“

Kaidan inhaled sharply, which made Liara stop talking. She pushed herself up against his torso so she could look at him.

“I’m sorry, you obviously don’t want to talk about it” she rubbed her face in embarrassment and defeat, wiping the last tear tracks off her face. “I’m so dense.”

As awfully worried thinking about Shepard made Kaidan feel, the situation made him a bit amused. It was similar to the time on the SR1 Shep told him about, back when Liara couldn’t yet pick up on John’s poor attempts at joking.

“It’s okay,” he said softly. He decided to take this opportunity to attempt clearing up a matter he couldn’t understand for a while now. “I just don’t understand why the whole crew thinks he’s… you know. Gone.”

The last word caused the Major’s face to twist in a grimace. He looked up and saw Liara staring at him, eyes wide, concern painted all over her face.

“So you don’t know.” It wasn’t much of a question and Kaidan hated how sick with anxiety it made him feel.

“Know what?” He asked, mostly out of compulsion, not out of legitimate desire to know. Liara gave him an apologetic look and twisted her body until she was sitting cross-legged in front of him. She grabbed his had in both hers and rested them in his lap.

“Kaidan, I have no idea how to say this” she finally spoke. Fear was coiling in his guts. “When we took off from Earth… the reason we never went back to pick Shepard up was, well… right after the Catalyst was activated, his vital signs…”

She said something about doctor Chakwas tapping into Shep’s live vital’s feed and how they lost connection for a long time but shortly before jumping into FTL they managed to get a weak signal and find John’s channel… but Kaidan wasn’t listening, feeling the haze of everything cloud his perception yet again. Frankly, he felt overwhelmed - with worry, responsibility, sadness and dwindling bits of hope.

He snapped back to reality when Liara was close to finishing her speech, almost whispering again at this point:

“…He was gone, Kaidan. All of the stats flatlined.”

The Major bit his lip, hard. He felt the metallic taste of blood on his tongue and heard Liara’s concerned gasp. Damn it, he came here to console her, not fall apart like a fool. He inhaled and wiped his face, feeling his sadness dissolve into anger.

And with anger, his entirely not Canadian, stubborn nature awoke.

Shepard didn’t simply _die. _He’s done it before and that didn’t stop him. When they’ll pick the Normandy off this space rock they were on, they’d go back to Earth and discuss whether to throw Shepard a party or organize him an ass whooping for the amount of worry he put all of them in.

He simply _couldn’t _be dead. He has proven time and time again that the universe would fall apart without him.

“Whatever the vitals said, they’re wrong. They must be,” he said, doing his best to ignore Liara’s concerned looks. “He’s fine and waiting for us back on Earth. I can feel it.”

“I calculated the force of the blast, Kaidan, there is a very small chance that he could even-”

“I’m sure of it.”

The last sentence came out probably a bit too forcefully, because Liara retracted her hands, letting go of his palm. Kaidan sighed, cursing himself out in his mind.

Get it together, he thought. You’re here to help her.

The man climbed back up on his feet and cleared his throat. Liara stood up as well, looking a bit better. They both were at a desperate need of a distraction, and focusing on each other’s issues rather than their own seemed to always do the trick for them. That was, after all, what they did for a short time after they lost Shep at Alchera.

Kaidan was ready to offer Liara another distraction.

“We crashed on an alien planet,” he said, mustering up as much confidence in his voice as he could manage. “Our scanners are down. We don’t know where we are. We need to figure out what the atmosphere of this place is made of. If you can think of any way to do that, let me know.”

It was relieving to see the mental cogs start turning in Liara’s head. The look she got on her face whenever she pondered something intensely was unmistakable and like a breath of fresh air in their situation.

“I… of course, Major” she spoke. “I think I could come up with a couple of methods.”

Kaidan nodded at that.

“That’s great. If you find out anything, let me know.”

He turned around to walk away and Liara followed him to the office part of her cabin. She picked a couple of papers off the ground and immediately began sketching something with a pencil, holding everything down on a very tilted desk. Kaidan stopped at the doorway to look at her.

“Liara,” he said. Her eyes snapped up at him, questioning. “Are you going to be okay?”

She took a second to respond, almost as if she wasn’t sure what the answer was, initially. After a while, she simply nodded and went back to her sketch.

Kaidan sighed, feeling none the better.

This had to be good enough.

When Kaidan pushed the door open again, he was met with the view of Garrus and Tali in the short corridor, clearly in the middle of a conversation. The Turian shot the Major a questioning look over his shoulder. Despite his inability to read Turian expressions, Kaidan has gotten accustomed to this one. He had James and his poker nights, where Garrus pretended not to know what was going on, only to clear them all out in the end, to thank for that.

“She’s fine,” he said, not wanting to get into more detail at this time. The Turian nodded. He understood. “Tali,” the man looked at the Quarian.

She nodded at him.

“I was just looking for you,” she said.

“Yea” Garrus was quick to provide an explanation. “Tali here has been telling me about the status of the engines.”

Kaidan raised his eyebrows at her.

“I was,” she confirmed. The two of them have gotten strangely in sync over the last couple of days and Kaidan wasn’t sure why. “I have checked all of the mechanical parts of the drive core and the systems in control of it.”

“What have you learned?”

“Well,” her body weight shifted from one side to the other. Her body language spoke: unsure. “It would seem there was some kind of a system-wide surge across the board. Nothing crucial is damaged, but everything was put out of commission. I would have to replace a lot of circuits for us to even get our oxygen recycling systems back online.”

Kaidan’s eyes almost flew out of their sockets.

“What do you mean, back online? They’re down?”

She nodded.

“They were what I checked first. Kind of a habit you pick up growing up on the Flotilla. It won’t be a problem to get them back up and running,” Tali added, no doubt noticing his mildly panicked expression. “I will just need a couple of spare parts. Engineer Adams should have them somewhere.”

The Major scrunched up his nose. There were so many organizational problems to deal with and he was beginning to have little clue what to throw himself at to be most useful.

“What will it take to make the Normandy airborne again?” He asked.

“From what I can see now” Tali lowered her voice and for some reason, everything about her appearance seemed apologetic “I will need a lot of parts and a couple of weeks.”

The urge to let out a string of swearwords was high. Kaidan has managed to suffocate it somehow, though. He took a second before responding.

"We have neither. What now?”

The Quarian thought for a minute.

“Well… I could take apart a couple of the other systems around the ship. It would be much harder to deal with emergencies in space once we get to it, but we would have a chance to pick the Normandy up off the ground again.”

“It’s that bad?” Garrus’s almost-whisper was anything but comforting.

“I’m afraid it is” was the answer.

They stood in stunned silence for a while, letting the reality of the situation sink in. Kaidan was the first one to break the silence, calling upon his commanding officer tone to do the job of motivating others into action for him.

“You’re free to take apart any non-essential systems we have. You can have anybody else who knows anything about engineering help you. Trainor should be of some use, check with her.”

Garrus nodded.

“Keep me updated” he added. “And if you need anything, let me know.”

“We will, Kaidan” Tali spoke softly. “And you know we’re here if you need to talk.”

It was a welcome change from the “I’m sorry for your loss” conversations Kaidan went through so many times today. Tali, like many of them, has lost a lot in this war. She understood what it was like and reacted similarly to what Kaidan was going through. The Major heard that when the crew was flying Cerberus colours, she didn’t believe in the Admiralty Board’s accusations about her father for even a second until she checked the situation herself.

Kaidan always liked that about her.

The two aliens walked away and towards the ladder in the medbay that lead to engineering. The Major let his feet take him to the main deck, where he felt he’d be most useful for now. As soon as he crawled out of the shaft, he heard Samantha’s voice from the direction of the galaxy map.

“Major,” she said. “I have something important to show you.”

Kaidan sighed. This was going to be a very long day.


	8. Chapter 8

_Shepard_

“This has got to be the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”

Coats looked unamused. Jack burst out laughing.

“It’s obvious you’ve never worked with Shepard.”

The Major murmured something under his breath, unamused. He picked up a small mass effect core off the ground. Miranda, Wrex and his Krogan crew somehow managed to pull it out of a crashed Krogan tank and bring back to a, as they described it, “more or less working order”.

With every instance of fixing any piece of technology, it was becoming more obvious that the blast somehow interacted with element zero and caused something of a multisystem, massive electrical surge that somehow did not end up frying the systems completely, just enough to put them out of commission. The breaking down of further systems was a consequence of the core malfunction. That was, at least, what Jack understood of Miranda’s attempt at explaining the situation. She knew the Major was in a similar boat.

Coats put the core into the shuttle next to another smaller one that came from a human tank. The team got it back up and running in record speed.

“Okay,” he said, with a sigh, his face crumpled up in a frown. “Just so we’re clear here.” He looked at Miranda. “We have the cores you requested. What are we going to do with ‘em?”

Jack took full note of a half-self assured, half-excited smirk that crept onto Miranda’s face. Who would have thought that after leaving Cerberus, she would become a very disturbing kind of an adrenaline junkie?

“I did some calculations” she spoke, reaching for a stack of papers. They were covered in equations. “What seems to make the most sense is that the Citadel is in an oval orbit around Earth.”

The Major crossed his arms over his chest.

“What does that mean for us?”

“Well, the orbit is pushing the station closer to the atmosphere with every full pass it makes. If we let it run in circles like that for long enough, it will eventually enter a close enough range that Earth’s gravity will pull it in and cause it to crash.”

“And that’s bad, I assume” Wrex chimed in.

Miranda nodded.

“An object of this size plummeting from space would cause a catastrophic series of events.”

“Like what?”

“Fires, massive earthquakes, continental drift, not even mentioning all of the massive volcanos that would erupt, starting probably in Yellowstone and following from there.”

“Ah” the Krogan leader rubbed his neck. “We had a similar problem on Tuchanka. Not a fun view.”

“Yes. Since we can’t move the station further away from the planet, all we really need to do now is stabilize the orbit. And fast.”

Coats looked more displeased with every word being said.

“How fast?”

“In the span of the next two hours, preferably.”

Jack snorted. Typical.

“A challenge! I like it!” Wrex jumped up and bumped his giant fists together. Jack vaguely remembered the Krogan did things like this when excited.

Suddenly, her face straightened, taking on a serious expression.

“We’re gonna look for Shepard, right?” She asked.

Miranda looked at Coats, who sighed heavily.

“Look, the man’s a hero, I get it,” he said. “Not taking that away from him. But as it is right now, as much as it hurts you to hear that, he isn’t our priority at the moment.”

He took notice of Jack’s look before continuing.

“Look, if the area is stable we can go and have a look, but the truth is that the Citadel is huge, there’s probably no atmosphere left up there and there is no reason to believe the Commander survived in the first place.”

He raised his hands in a defence gesture.

“But we can look.”

Jack glanced over at Miranda.

“Do we have any news about him? Anything?”

The brunette shook her head.

“His vitals stopped being broadcasted to the military database as soon as the Crucible fired. It’s nothing certain, however. A lot of military personnel had the same thing happen to their life monitoring systems.”

Jack cursed and winced, used to not swearing around her students, only to realise they weren’t here.

“Well, whatever,” she said, stern expression painted all over her face and features. “We’ll look anyway. And if you guys won’t, I sure as hell will.”

“You mentioned stabilizing the orbit,” Coats said, propping himself against the side of the shuttle, ignoring Jack completely. He raised his eyebrows. “How are we going to do that? We did talk about how we can’t strap a cable to it and haul.”

Miranda nodded.

“That is what we need the eezo cores for. I would prefer to explain on our way up. We don’t have much time.”

The Major sighed, muttered something that sounded like ‘why exactly am I doing this’ under his breath and flagged down a soldier that was running around with a notebook and pencil between different groups of people. Since the comm channels were still down, that’s how the commanding officers communicated. The young lady ran up to Coats and saluted him spryly.

“Message to the command chain,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “During my absence, command of this part of London falls on Commander Graham Steckler.”

The serviceman scribbled the name down in her notebook.

“Anything else?” She asked.

“All troops are to proceed as ordered. Combing the area for survivors and any possible leftover enemy forces is to continue until I return.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I don’t return, the permanent command will remain with Commander Steckler until a higher ranking officer decides otherwise.”

“Aye, sir.”

“That’s all,” Coats said, eyes surveying the rubble of the buildings above the woman’s head. Jack recognized that stare as one of a man who has gone through enough in his life to know exactly what to expect from situations like this. The Major has been on the move with no rest for a long time. There was no doubt in the biotic’s mind that Coats saw only one option for himself - he will continue working until he can’t anymore. Whether it was death that takes him off duty or retirement was all the same to him.

Wrex, Miranda, Jack, Coats and an Alliance shuttle pilot suited up, praying that the enviro properties of their gear were still active, armed themselves with whatever dangerous blunt objects were available since most guns got fried in the blast and climbed aboard the spacecraft. Before boarding, the Krogan yelled at his men that they were to listen to the humans and not get into trouble when he was gone, or he’d “shoot the pyjacks where they stood” and that they’ll “be sorry their mothers weren’t nuked to stone age along with the rest of Tuchanka” if he found out they weren’t cooperating with the humans. The soldiers seemed to understand well enough. Jack chuckled behind Wrex’s back through his whole speech.

The shuttle pilot, Ben McKelly as he introduced himself, looked at the control panel, raised his hands, whispered a quick prayer and loudly said:

“Let’s see if your magic worked.”

Miranda, who sat in the copilot’s seat nodded and Ben flicked the controls on.

The shuttle rumbled to life and Wrex roared victoriously.

“Nobody will be able to tell me that the Krogan aren’t good for something!” He yelled. Miranda turned to him in her seat and shot him an amused stare.

“Remember you didn’t do it alone,” she fired at him. Wrex raised his hands in a defensive gesture.

“Maybe you fleshy things aren’t quite so useless after all,” he said, grinning.

“I’d like to see you say that to Shepard” Jack quipped. The atmosphere in the shuttle immediately turned strange. On one hand, the crew members were amused. On the other, they were all terrified that not only Wrex but anyone, will never again be able to tell Shepard anything.

The shuttle lurched forward and up, clearing the building and reaching for the sky.

The kinetic stabilisers weren’t perfectly calibrated since they weren’t a priority when the shuttle was getting fixed and Jack felt her stomach travel to her throat and back, thrashing around all the while. The craft was dipping down slightly every once in a while on its incline. McKelly swore under his breath. Jack felt a sudden pang of nostalgia, remembering Joker. She hoped he was alright, wherever he was.

The spacecraft continued distancing itself from the ground. The turbulence eased a bit when the atmosphere thinned and the entire crew let out a sigh of relief. Soon enough, the blue tint visible through the window cleared and made space for familiar, impenetrable darkness of the universe.

Jack felt her feet float off the ground. Her body started drifting off the floor and into the air. She was confused for a second, but her brain quickly recalled a couple of situations where the ships she was on had their gravity generators turned off.

“What the hell?” She called out towards the cockpit. Coats cursed. Miranda’s laughter followed suit.

“We didn’t have enough time to fix the gravity generators so you’ll have to survive a bit of weightlessness. Welcome back to the twenty-first century.”

A loud thud echoed through the cabin. Jack turned around, flailing her arms around, trying to catch onto something. The shuttle was designed with weightlessness as an option, in case of an emergency, not as the primary way of travelling. She saw Wrex rubbing the top of his head vigorously, with Coats next to him, trying not to get squished between the floating Krogan and a wall.

“I have no idea how you humans did it back in the day” Wrex murmured, annoyed.

“Alright, Miranda” the Major’s grumpy voice filled the air. He pushed Wrex away in an attempt at protecting himself. “You said you’d explain your plan on the way. I’m waiting.”

“Right. I’m assuming you know the basics of mass effect cores’ functions.”

“I’m not an idiot, thank you very much.”

“So, since they can make a very heavy object very light with the correct length of emissions like they do with our ships to lift them off the ground, they can do the opposite as well.”

“And how does that help us?” Wrex looked unconvinced and slightly lost.

Coats laughed.

“She wants to pull the Citadel away by turning this shuttle into a giant asteroid.”

The Krogan looked even more confused. Miranda snorted.

“Figuratively speaking. We’ll generate enough mass effet fields to make it seem like this shuttle weighs a lot more than it does and use that weight to pull the Citadel into a stable orbit with gravity.”

Jack felt her mouth drop open. This sounded wild.

“How the fuck did you come up with that?”

She noticed the brunette shrugged.

“You wouldn’t believe the kind of things people in the twenty-first century were ready for. I read about it on an extranet site some time ago.”

Silence filled the shuttle. The crew in the back managed to find suitable spots to hang onto so they weren’t at risk of bumping into each other in case of any emergency. Jack had to admit weightlessness felt kind of nice, after the feeling of her stomach wanting to exit through her mouth subsided.

Through a couple of minutes of flight, the only interruption fo silence was McKelly’s voice, as he murmured checks and updates on system status. It was hard to tell whether they were directed at Miranda or himself.

“Prepare to look out to the left,” the brunette said after a while.

Jack did as she said. Her body was conveniently floating next to the starboard of the shuttle. Her eyes followed the curve of the planet below them, changed their course to trace the sliver of dark space above and settled on…

“Holy shit balls,” she said, unable to stop herself.

A wreck of the Citadel floated into view.

The Crucible's blast blew three of the five arms off the main hub of the station and they were now floating next to it, attached by mere theatres. It was surrounded by debris, chunks of metal and a couple of Alliance vessels that were destroyed in the Reaper’s push on the Crucible. Through her entire life, Jack has never seen the station less than bustling with life, as even though the Reaper war it was still a lively centre of culture in the galaxy, so seeing it now, dead, with all the lights off, drifting through the empty void of space had Jack feeling uneasy.

“Alright” Coats spoke in a firm, commanding voice, tearing the biotic away from her thoughts. It reminded her of the way Shepard would speak back when they were flying on the SR2 whenever serious business was involved. “Miranda” she turned around in her chair to look at him. Her hair floated around her head like a sea of snakes. “ Is it possible for you to find a place to dock the shuttle at?”

She looked uncertain, taking a glance at McKelly. The young pilot was engrossed in the controls, so doubt trying to compensate for the craft’s engine’s poor fix job.

“I can try,” she said, her voice stern and calm. The Major nodded at that. Wrex spun around to look at him. The man continued:

“We’re going to split into two teams, then. Miranda and McKelly will take the shuttle. They’ll drop the rest of us off at a decent position and take off again to stabilize the orbit.”

The brunette nodded and Jack felt her head mimic the movement.

“The three of us will look for Shepard. Jack” he turned to her. “You seem to care. No rush movements, understood? Whatever I say, goes. You’re Alliance, by whatever messed up proxy the Grysom Academy mixed up for you so you have to follow orders.” His eyes drilled into hers. She held his stare, letting out an annoyed sigh. “Got it?”

Damn the boy scouts, she thought.

“Mhm,” she suppressed an eye roll.

“That’s ‘mhm, sir’ to you” Coats fired at her, then turned his attention back to Lawson, not giving the tattooed biotic a chance to respond.

“Do we have any idea where Shepard might be?”

Miranda took a while to respond. She looked like she was raking her memory.

“When I was back in the intelligence centre during the attack, we had a ping on the Commander, but I wasn’t paying much attention to it. I’m pretty sure he was somewhere inside of the Crucible, though, close to the centre.”

Coats sighed.

“Makes sense. Any way you could take us there, McKelly?” He asked.

The pilot eyed the view on the starboard and tapped the controls. The shuttle changed its course and angled itself towards the nearest arm of the Citadel.

“I will try” was the response. Jack had to give it to the Flight Lieutenant, he looked like a dedicated one.

The spacecraft sped past the debris, the engines sending waves of disconcerting vibrations through the hull, and closed in on the station. The scale was breathtaking every time. Every time she was headed to the Citadel, Jack couldn’t help but feel so insufferably small.

McKelly brought them close to the main hub of the station where the council chambers used to be located. The Crucible was sticking out of the ring like a sore thumb, but it looked like the most well-preserved piece of the Citadel.

The pilot manoeuvred between floating pieces of metal and brought the shuttle to an opening in one of the Crucible’s walls. They all soon caught gravity of the station and the spacecraft flopped awkwardly onto the metal floor below. The crew dropped from their weightless state with a couple of loud thuds.

“Alright,” Coats said, putting his helmet on. Jack zipped her uniform up and put the rebreather she found back on Earth over her mouth and nose. They didn’t have great gear. This would have to be enough. “Since we have no communications, we will have to time this mission. Miranda. How much time do you need?”

“The full pass of the Citadel around the planet takes about an hour. We are about thirty minutes away from it being in the position we need it to be in. After it’s in place, it should be a matter of minutes to pull it into a stable orbit.”

Coats considered his options for a while, then nodded.

“You heard her, people. Half an hour. We’ll comb the area, try to locate Shepard.” He looked at the Flight Lieutenant. “After you’re done, we’ll rendezvous here.”

He turned around, checked Jack’s and Wrex’s state of readiness and punched the button responsible for opening the door to the shuttle. He jumped out of it shortly after. His feet hit the ground. The human and Krogan biotics followed.

“Right” the Major murmured, barely audible from behind the helmet. “Let’s see where the bloody Commander’s at.”


	9. Chapter 9

_Kaidan_

“What is it, Samantha?”

Kaidan walked up to her and folded his arms over his chest, resting his body weight on one leg.

“I looked into EDI like you asked.”

“Find out anything?”

The Comm Specialist nodded.

“I couldn’t analyse the system through the console since our tech is down, but I looked at the links and circuits.”

“And?”

“I also talked to Tali when she was up here briefly. We concluded, that there was a surge in the systems that rendered them dysfunctional. It doesn’t appear to be a complicated issue, but one that requires-”

Kaidan chuckled bitterly.

“Let me guess, a lot of parts and time.”

Samantha nodded.

“Aaand some fine tools as well, I’m afraid.”

Kaidan frowned.

“So, just so I’m clear here: there was a system-wide surge that shut down our tech. And the effect was comparable to a galaxy-wide EMP grenade going off.”

Samantha perked up at the comparison.

“Exactly. It wasn’t an electromagnetic pulse per se. If it was, we have a lot of spare fuses on board to replace the melted ones with, but the effect is similar and requires similar maintenance.”

“Okay. What does this have to do with EDI?”

“Her core suffered similar damage. I don’t think it’s impossible to fix it, but there is a couple of issues with that.”

“Such as?”

“We don’t have an AI specialist on board. We have Tali, but even though she’s an engineer, she doesn’t have much experience with AI, especially not of human design.”

Most of the specialists are on Earth so that checks out, Kaidan thought. He nodded at Samantha to encourage her to continue talking.

“There’s also another issue. Memory cores are rather delicate. I’m afraid that even though the operating systems could be fixed, we can’t be sure EDI would be… quite the same person we all knew.”

“What do you mean?” Kaidan asked.

“It’s as if someone who was gravely wounded was in a coma. We can fix the body, but the mind remains a mystery until the patient wakes up and we can assess their state. There’s a lot of things a person like this could suffer from. Memory loss, personality change, or they could not wake up at all.”

Kaidan sighed.

“So we have no guarantees EDI wouldn’t, say, forget us all and regress to the state of that rogue VI on the moon.”

Samantha nodded.

“I read that report. Yes, that is unfortunately correct.”

“Damn it… Okay. Good job Sam.”

She flashed a weak smile at him.

“My pleasure, Major.”

He looked up, over the now inactive galaxy map to catch a glimpse of the cockpit. Joker was talking to doctor Chakwas now who appeared to be patching him up.

He looked back at Samantha.

“Be careful with this around Joker. He’s taking this situation… poorly.”

Samantha glanced at the cockpit as well, with a concerned, albeit understanding look on her face.

“Of course, Major.”

“I think it’s best if you keep this information on a need-to-know basis.”

She nodded. Kaidan mirrored the gesture.

“Good work, Specialist” he spoke softly, lessons on keeping morale high back from when he was still in the Alliance Academy sounding clear in his head. “I’m sure Tali could use your help if you have a minute.”

“I’ll be right over with her” she responded. She picked up a couple of sheets of paper and a pencil and placed them in the pocket of her uniform. Kaidan had no idea that the Normandy had a traditional writing equipment stash, but since the datapads were unusable and the entire crew looked to be using paper and seeing how the Major was pretty sure they weren’t conjuring it from thin air, there must have been a crate of it somewhere.

As Samantha turned her attention to a task that didn’t concern Kaidan, he turned around and headed towards the lower deck. He decided to check on the crew’s status. He knew John did it a lot and figured the crew needed a little encouragement now. He also still felt himself desperately needing a distraction from any thoughts that could stop his mind from racing towards Alchera and this situation being its possible repeat.

…

Over the next couple of hours, Kaidan ended up helping almost all of his crew.

Along with Tali, Garrus, Gabby, Kenneth and engineer Adams they stripped two non-essential consoles on the main deck and brought the parts back to engineering where the Major got to take a look at the inactive core and listen to a complicated explanation of what was wrong with it, which happily wasn’t “everything.”

He also got to listen to James, Javik and Cortez give him a status report on which ship systems were down and needed repairing. Tali has already taken care of the air filters. The backup lighting system, which was unbearably red but better than absolute darkness worked only because of some ancient technology weaved into it that made it EMP-proof.

Joker was found to not have broken any ribs and suffered only heavy bruising to his chest. He decided to remain in the cockpit for the time being, since the tilt of the Normandy, which must have been prepped against something made it hard for him to walk. The pilot just sat in his seat, staring blankly at the planet’s surface, eyes cloudy. Nobody tried to bother him, not even Samantha, who must have taken Kaidan’s advice of not engaging the pilot.

After a few hours of hard work which put the Major’s mind at ease, Liara found him in the mess hall where he was busy conducting an inventory of rations and medicine with James and Cortez.

“Kaidan,” she said and he straightened up. He looked at her.

“Yes, Liara?” He asked.

She smiled softly.

“I finished what you asked of me to make. I set it up in the airlock. Come on, I’ll show you.”

Kaidan looked at James and Cortez.

“You’ll be alright here?” He cocked his eyebrow at them. They nodded.

“Ye, Major, no worries” James responded.

“We’ll get it done no problem” Cortez added.

Kaidan nodded at them both and turned back to Liara.

“Let’s go then. Lead the way.”

…

They walked through the ship and arrived at the airlock. The first door was open halfway, enough for two people walk in side by side.

A decently sized object stood in the hallway, pointing something that looked like a nozzle towards the other airlock door. The tilt was making it a bit hard to balance, but Kaidan and Liara braced themselves against the door. The machine was secured to the floor with suction cups. The Major had no idea where the Asari got them from.

“What’s this?” He asked. Liara smiled with very tired pride.

“It’s a tool that will let us assess what the atmosphere of this planet consists of.”

“And it’ll do it how?”

Liara looked pleased.

“I couldn’t use electronics to get a reading since all of the systems are inoperable. We usually would just scan the air with a probe or a sensor but that isn’t possible anymore. So,” she crouched down and slid towards her machine to look at it closer. Kaidan did the same. “I remembered a lesson from my archaeology class on old Asari machines. Before space flight, my people would send probes into space to see if there was any life out there. One of the things they did was analyse the contents of distant planets’ atmospheres all the way from the orbit of Thessia.”

Her face fell, but only for a second, before she picked up her speech again.

“They used a system of mirrors and prisms to test the light that passed through the atmospheres of those distant planets. The light that passes through ozone looks different than elements like oxygen and carbon dioxide. With this,” she patted the machine lovingly, “we’ll be able to open the airlock, point the nozzle at the sky and this bit here” she pointed to a rectangular piece at the back of the contraption “will split the light into different colours. The ratio of them to one another will give us a rough estimate of the contents of this atmosphere.”

Kaidan stared blankly at the machine, then shifted his eyes at Liara.

“This… this is incredible. How the hell did you remember that?”

If the Asari could blush, Liara would be blushing.

“You’d be surprised what one can remember over a hundred years of existence.”

“I mean, sure,” the Major said. “I remember learning that humans did something like this, too, but I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to build it if you asked me to.”

The Asari chuckled.

“I am sure there are things you remember much better than me,” she spoke, after which she got up, no doubt to try to hike out of the airlock.

“Amazing work none the less,” the Major said and followed her movements.

He boosted Liara over to the door where she pulled herself up and offered him a hand. He jumped, grabbed it with one hand, gripping the other on the door ledge. With a quiet grunt, Kaidan managed to crawl out of the airlock.

“Alright,” he said when they were both back on their feet. Joker didn’t turn around, which was concerning, seeing how Kaidan could almost hear his voice forming some ironic comment about “a graceful entry”. “We need to suit up and open the door.”

“Right on it, Major” Liara said and headed towards the ladder to the mess hall.

Kaidan followed her. When they reached the lower deck, he stopped by the marines carrying out what looked to be the last stages of inventory.

“James,” he said softly. The soldier’s eyes snapped to him over the crates they were counting. “I’m gonna need you to suit up and help me with the airlock.”

Vega looked at Steve.

“You gonna be good here, Estaban?”

Cortez nodded.

“Just fine, mister Vega.”

James got up and saluted. Kaidan led him to the armoury where they were welcomed by an incredible mess. Anything that wasn’t strapped down got flung across the whole hangar. That included some weapons, tools put aside for later and Vega’s dumbells, which wreaked some decent havoc around the place.

“Ah,” James said, stopping next to Kaidan, taking the view in.

“Ah indeed,” the Major confirmed. They’ll have to clean the place up later.

They slid down to their armour stations and started suiting up.

The tech on their gear didn’t work and Kaidan doubted the rebreathers were any good, but there was enough air in the armour once you put the helmet on which could sustain them both for a couple of minutes in the airlock.

“This is so much harder to put on without motorized joints” Kaidan heard James grunt out and chuckled. He wondered how Vega would feel about the previous gear regs, where their armour was unbearably skin-tight before the Alliance changed their uniforms and gear to be more accommodating of different body types. He tried not to laugh at the mental image of James in one of those.

After a couple of minutes, they were both suited up, ready and rather uncomfortable. No motorized joints and no heating and cooling systems meant they were sweaty in no time.

The soldiers made their way up to the main deck, facing challenges such as climbing a ladder in a narrow shoot and arrived at the airlock. James was slightly out of breath since most of the ladder passages were a bit too narrow to accommodate his broad shoulders and he was forced to squeeze through. He was cursing under his breath in Spanish all the way up as well, which only made the situation funnier in Kaidan’s eyes. The older marine recognized that he was at this particular stage of grief where everything that was going wrong around them just seemed ridiculous and therefore amusing. He was hoping to not let it show around the crew, however. They needed hope, though he supposed they weren’t feeling much different. Or better, for that matter.

Liara was waiting for them.

“Okay,” Kaidan said when they were standing over the airlock door. “We’ll go in, seal this door, put our helmets on and open the other airlock. Clear?”

“Yessir” James responded. Liara nodded.

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

They climbed into the airlock. James and Kaidan somehow managed to shut the airlock door, after which they slid down to the opening and braced themselves against it. They put their helmets on, Liara covered her mouth and nose with a rebreather and then each soldier grabbed onto the ledge that split the door into two.

“Alright, James” Kaidan said, panting slightly. He had to speak louder than usual. The speaker of his helmet didn’t work either. “On three. One. Two. Three!”

They pulled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, one day late but I'm back with another chapter! This one is a bit shorter because I wanted to end it in a good place. I have big plans for the next chapters so stay tuned :)  
Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day!


	10. Chapter 10

_Shepard_

As soon as Jack’s boots landed on the concrete floor of the Citadel, she felt the cold.

It was clear the station somehow sustained the artificial gravity and it was very possible there still was an atmosphere around them, but the group wasn’t willing to check that for themselves. Removing their masks, whether they were actually functional or not, put them at possible risk of not only suffocation but also breathing in something harmful. Coats prohibited them from it as well.

“We can’t be sure the beam hadn’t poked at something very toxic that is leaking out into the air as we speak,” he said.

They had a quick search around the area where they landed after the shuttle departed for the Citadel's orbit. This part of the station seemed to have sustained heavy damage from the beam.

It was an unfamiliar territory for the team members, especially Coats who hasn’t spent much time in space during his military career and has spent all of the Reaper war on Earth. Neither Jack nor Wrex participated in the Crucible project, so they had no idea how to navigate the bulbous chamber.

The room they found themselves in was large, with a tall ceiling lost in the darkness. The area also looked to be more or less oval, which added to the confusion, as it provided very little points of orientation. A brief look around and the team realized that the shuttle landed on a ledge that was connected to a central platform located in the middle of the room with a series of metal walkways, most of which looked destroyed. Directly across from the group Jack noticed a large window. She thought she caught a glimpse of Earth through it, but she wasn’t sure. There was a pillar in the centre of the room that made it impossible to see the full window. It looked out of place as if it wasn’t a part of the design of the Catalyst and only found itself there after the explosion.

“Alright,” Coats spoke, echo following in the wake of his words. “Let’s spread out and look around, see if we can find the Commander. Look for a stable bridge.” He looked around, his eyes tracing the platform that looked to have been following the circumference of the room. Something tells me we’ll have to cross to the bit in the middle.” He turned around to face Jack and Wrex who have been standing behind him. “You find anything, you yell.”

Jack nodded. Usually, she would send the Major off with a snarky comment, but she found herself surprisingly tense. The months she spent with Shepard took a toll on her and she couldn’t picture him not surviving this situation. If she knew anything about herself, it was that she valued justice, and as far as she was concerned, Shep justly deserved retirement among the living. She cared and worried about him and she disliked how it made her feel.

They went separate ways, with Coats going alone to the left and Wrex following Jack to the right to look for a viable bridge.

The room turned out to be much bigger than Jack had originally thought and it took them a good couple of minutes to circle it. All of the bridges they found were either completely destroyed or looked suspiciously like they were going to collapse the second a human foot was to grace their surface, not even mentioning how it would never in a million years support the weight of a Krogan warlord.

It was only the last bridge that looked sturdy enough for them to cross. That was also where they met up with the Major again.

“Figures,” Wrex said. “It always has to be the last bridge, last cave, last crate… Nothing ever happens on the first try, does it?”

Coats shot the bridge a critical stare.

“It doesn’t seem we have much of a choice but to try and cross here.”

Coats pointed to the centre of the room with his flashlight.

“See this area?” He spoke to his two teammates. “I think I can see an opening there. Let’s check it out. Keep your eyes peeled for Shepard.”

Jack winced at the words. “Keeping eyes peeled for Shepard” meant that the Major assumed the possibility that the boy scout could have gotten thrown over the edge of one of the bridges. Jack didn’t like that idea.

Suddenly, the Citadel began shaking uncontrollably. Jack lost her balance and she took a couple of uncontrollable steps sideways, bumping into Wrex. The giant Krogan grabbed her arm and kept her upright. The tremors continued for a couple of seconds and then stopped.

“Well, shit, Miranda and McKelly must be doing something up there,” the Major said. “Let’s move before that happens again.”

They walked forward, Coats taking the lead. His boots tapped quietly at the surface of the bridge, testing the footing before placing his leg firmly on the ground. The man moved with your typical soldier grace and Jack followed his walk with her eyes, finding herself to be enjoying the show. Marines had a hypnotizing air around them, their training visible through almost everything they did.

Jack crossed next. She realized that the bridge was way thinner than she thought and the space below it much deeper. You couldn’t see the bottom when you looked down. If Shepard was there, the man was gone. No way they could ever find or reach him. The biotic really hoped that wasn’t the case.

Wrex was the last one to cross. Jack and Coats waited for him on the other side. The bridge creaked unsettlingly under the weight of the warlord but managed not to break.

“You can never find Shepard in normal places, now can you?” He asked as soon as he got to stable flooring.

The group was now standing very close to the pillar in the centre. What initially Jack believed to have been an oval room proved to be circular. The pillars had an opening in it that lead to a new room that completed the circle. A contraption looking to be a console of some sort could be seen in the middle, close to a giant window that overlooked the Earth. If it wasn’t for the heavy atmosphere of the situation, the view would have been breathtaking.

“I…” Coats’s voice was shaking slightly as he approached the remnants of the console on the front of the group. “I think I see someone over there.”

Jack’s heart sped up for a second, the anxiety consuming her.

The three of them closed in on the structure, circling it from the left, and…

“Oh god,” the Major whispered. He dropped the gun he was holding and fell on his knees close to a figure sitting on the floor, with back rested against the console. Jack realized it was a soldier as soon as she saw him, possibly a high ranking one at that. He looked pale despite his darker complexion. His eyes were closed. There was a lot of now dry blood on the floor around him. Jack has seen enough dead men in her life to know the man was gone before Coats finished searching for the pulse.

“Admiral Andreson!” The Major called out, grabbing his shoulder with his one hand and shaking him. There was no response. Wrex cursed in his native tongue and it sounded as if a horde of cockroaches got crushed at the same time. Coats sat in silence for a couple of seconds, waiting for a pulse. He didn’t find any. “He’s cold,” he said in a resigned voice, getting back up on his feet and picking up his gun.

“He was a brave warrior,” Wrex said. “He will be remembered.”

Coats shot him an inquisitive stare.

“You knew the Admiral?” He asked, cocking his eyebrow at the Krogan, clearly surprised. Wrex nodded.

“Had a couple of run-ins with him back when I was flying on the Normandy with Shepard. Good man. Meant well.”

Coats nodded.

“That he did.”

He sighed and looked around, tracing the room with his flashlight.

“We’re going to have to take the Admiral’s body back to Earth. A hero like him deserves a proper burial.”

The rest of the team nodded in agreement.

“Well,” Coats said. “It looks like it was the Admiral who fired the Catalyst from this console,” he pointed to the metal stand Andreson’s body was resting against. “He and Shepard probably got here together, but only one of them made it to this spot alive.”

“Whatever the case,” Wrex spoke again, his loud, low voice echoing among the steel walls, “they both will be remembered by my people.”

Coats might have had Wrex convinced, but Jack turned her attention back to the blood splatter on the floor. Something about it didn’t sit right with her.

As the Krogan and the Major began discussing the logistics of transporting Anderson’s body back to Earth, Jack took a moment to look at the scene closer.

It didn’t look like the Admiral died peacefully. The now dry puddle looked disturbed as if by some form of struggle. It looked smudged as if Anderson came from somewhere.

She traced the smudge up and onto the console. There was a bloody handprint on the now inactive controls. Some blood was pulled off the print to the right. Jack took a step and squinted.

There was a clear trail of smudged and splattered blood, leading behind the console.

The biotic followed it, shining her flashlight as she went along, successfully attracting the attention of Major Coats, who called out after her:

“Hey, what are you doing?”

She didn’t respond. A couple more steps and she finished her investigation by a spot on the floor, where the trail of blood stopped very abruptly.

“What is it?” Coats tried again, tone more demanding this time, stopping next to Jack and looking at the spot she had her flashlight fixed on.

“See this?” Jack smirked, proud of herself. “This makes no sense.”

The Major scrunched up his nose.

The blood trail ended with a clear edge, looking as if it was cut off or mopped up by one clean stroke.

“The amount of blood around the Admiral looks a bit much for one person,” Jack said with confidence. She knew that when it came to convincing soldiers like Coats, she had to sound like she knew what she was talking about. The Major snorted, amused.

“Alright, and I’m supposed to believe that on top of being a biotic teacher, you’re also a doctor? Try harder.”

Jack felt a jab of offence pierce her ego but didn’t voice it. She continued instead:

“Well, if that doesn’t have you convinced, think about this. The trail of blood? The way it’s smudged suggest someone walked away from the console and to this spot, not the other way around.” Her voice took on a bit more aggressive tone. “So either the Admiral, with all the respect he deserves for his heroic deeds, did the most amazing moonwalk while bleeding profusely, or we have to consider that there was a second person here.” She looked him dead in the eye and with the most venomous tone she could manage, she finished her speech. “_Sir_.”

She was fed up with Coats and his disbelief in Shepard’s abilities. Sure he’s not had the chance to experience them firsthand, but he must have heard at least some of the news. A dude who singlehandedly kills a Reaper on foot doesn’t die by falling off the edge of a bloody bridge.

The Major didn’t seem impressed with her display of emotions but didn’t say a word, weighing hers in his mind instead.

“Alright, Let’s check this theory of yours,” ” he said after a minute of silence and raised his hand.

The light from the Major’s flashlight slid up onto the ceiling above them and disappeared suddenly in a large opening in the ceiling. Jack and Wrex pointed their flashlights up as well and looked closer.

The opening revealed itself to be a tunnel in the ceiling shooting straight up.

“Well…” Coats murmured, his head cocked back, eyes scanning the edges of the shoot. “I’m… assuming there must have been an elevator here… Even if you’re right, if that’s the case, we’re out of luck. Nothing works anymore.”

Jack wanted to punch something. Wrex came to the rescue.

“I could get you two up there,” he bellowed with a grin that barred all of his teeth. The human biotic was stumped.

“And how exactly will you do that?” She asked. That made Wrex grin even more.

“I’ve got an idea.”

…

Being carried by someone’s biotics always felt the same way. It filled Jack’s stomach with anxiety mixed with bliss. She didn’t understand it fully, but biotic abilities used gently always had a relaxing effect on her.

She was surprised to learn that Wrex still had some control over his biotics since none of the humans could use theirs. When asked about it, he told her it was his core natural abilities that survived the blast - his amp met a similar fate as any other. He also explained that the Krogan and Asari had natural biotic potential and, unlike humans, who needed amps to harness their abilities, they could use them without any additional technology. It was much harder, sure, and anything they did was less powerful, but the idea was the same.

Jack was lighter than Coats, so it made sense for her to be carried up the well with Wrex’x biotics first. As she slowly rose through the shoot, she traced the walls of it with her flashlight, in an attempt at spotting the top of it.

After what felt like a century, she finally noticed the ledge and called out to Coats to let him know of it. A couple of seconds later she was grabbing onto the next level’s metal floor and pulling herself up. She laid down on her stomach with her head hanging over the edge to observe the Major’s rise.

Wrex would have to stay on the floor below them since he couldn’t lift himself with his own biotics in this state. The team agreed that Wrex should carry Anderson’s body to the landing zone, so they could easily bring it onto the shuttle when it returned.

After a while of waiting, Jack saw Coats rising in the tunnel, surrounded by a faint, blue glow.

As she watched him, she thought a bit about the situation.

She hoped Shepard was alive, but the more time they spent in here, the more she looked around and saw nothing but destruction, she began losing confidence that the boy scout pulled through this. She also realized that the more she thought about it, she expected to bring the body of a friend, rather than the friend himself, back home.

After a while of steady floating and grunting on Wrex’ part, who was clearly becoming tired of the exertion of lifting two heavy humans a considerable distance into the air without crushing them like house flies, Coats found himself on the floor next to Jack.

They both stood up, the Major dusted himself off. They looked around.

The area around them looked like another very large room. Scraps of metal laid flung everywhere, creating an obstacle course for anyone who was going to attempt to cross it.

“Alright,” Coats said, tracing the ceiling and visible walls of the chamber with his flashlight. “This is how we’re going to do this.” He looked at Jack. “We’re splitting up to cover the most area. If you see Shepard, you yell. Clear?”

Jack nodded in compliance.

After a quick decision, she took the far-right of the hall, while Coats took left. They started walking forward, looking around as she went along. It was comparable to an obstacle course. The floor was littered with slabs of concrete and sheet metal that made it impossible to walk in a normal way. She did her best to climb over all the concrete and metal pieces to not miss anything. Coats was doing the same thing, with occasional swearwords echoing around the room. The Citadel shook once or twice again, but the tremors got less severe with every time it happened.

Just when Jack has almost crossed the entire side of the room, something caught her eye.

She turned around to her right to see what it was, but nothing around her looked out of the ordinary. The more she looked, the more scraps of metal she saw but nothing more stood out to her.

After a minute of paranoid looking later and giving herself a mental slap on the back of the head to get her shit together and stop seeing things that weren’t there, she turned back around to continue her search.

And there it was again.

A faint glow of some sort, right on the edge of her peripheral vision. A light that definitely shouldn’t be there.

She didn’t whip around this time, though. Her movement was careful and deliberate.

She noticed at which point of her rotation the glow disappeared. She shifted her stance a bit forward and repeated the motion one more time.

As soon as she was sure where it was coming from, she locked her eyes and flashlight on the spot. It was an otherwise inconspicuous pile of metal.

“Coats!” She called out, not letting the spot out of her sight. “Get your ass over here and look at this!”

The Major’s footsteps closed in and the man soon joined Jack on the pile of rubble. As soon as he did, his eyes widened.

“Oh shit,” he spat and lunged forward, Jack close behind him.

They got to the place where the glow was the strongest. It was coming from behind a giant piece of wires and metal and looked to be completely encased in it. As dim as the thing was, Jack would recognize the light of an omnitool anywhere.

“Shepard!” She yelled, desperately looking for a way to pry the metal plate resting in front of her, separating her and what she believed to be Shepard’s omnitool. She was desperate. “Shepard! Can you hear me?!”

There was no answer.

Coats motioned at Jack to grab onto the piece of rubble with him. She did as asked, lodging her fingers into the crack, as deep as they would go.

“One, two, three!” Coats counted down and they pulled, Jack pulled, as hard as she could, harder than ever before in her life it seemed.

Screaming, grunting and cursing, they lifted the damn sheet of metal off the pile and the biotic could have sworn it weighed a ton. In the background, she heard Wrex’s voice but she was too focused on the task at hand to focus on what he was saying.

She jumped into the created opening before Coats and she almost tripped over something.

Legs.

She almost tripped over a pair of legs.

“SHEPARD!” She yelled in triumph, but it, too, was soon replaced by dread.

She shone her flashlight at the man laying In front of her and felt a cold shiver run down her back.

You could barely tell it was him. He was laying on the ground, pale, dirty. His armour was melted and stuck to his body. He was covered in what she believed to have been dry blood as well and there was some of it on the floor around him, too.

She stood there in shock for just a second, before she was grabbed from behind and pulled away from the opening. She almost protested, but then she noticed Coats dive to where she stood before. The Major got to Shepard and assessed the situation.

“He’s not breathing,” he spoke quickly, voice firm. “He’s still warm.”

Jack saw him move his hands to Shepard’s breastplate. He looked for clamps, but those appeared to be melted into the rest of the armour. Coats swore, dug his fingers into the side of the breastplate and yanked.

The smallest piece of metal in the centre of Shepard’s chest dislodged and flew off the rest of the armour with a fleshy sound. Jack didn’t want to think about how much of burned skin came off with it. Whatever Coats intended with this movement, he seemed to have achieved it, because he jumped onto his knees next to Shep’s side, straightened his back and arms, placed his palms on the now revealed piece of skin and started pushing down rhythmically.

Jack mentally slapped herself upside the head. Resuscitation.

She decided to be useful, positioning her flashlight in such a way to shine some light for Coats. She couldn’t take her eyes off what was happening in front of her, her eyeballs jumping between the Major’s hands and Shepard’s face.

Coats swore after a couple of seconds, threw a whispered ‘come on!’ and moved swiftly to Shepard’s head. It was logical the atmosphere persisted in the Crucible, probably because of some forcefield, since Shepard was alive possibly minutes before they got to him. Coats tore off his gloves and helmet. He clasped Shepard’s nose with one hand, lodged his mouth open with the other and dove down. The Commander’s chest rose twice, and then Coats was back at the chest compressions.

The pattern repeated itself many times until Jack lost count. She felt numb. Her limbs were frozen in place and in a brief moment of self-reflection, she realized she hasn’t felt this way since she was a child imprisoned by Cerberus. The boy scout made her care so much about him. Fuck him and everything else. If he was going to die, Jack promised herself she’d break into whatever afterlife he’d end up at, to personally kick his ass.

“Come on, man!” Coats panted between compressions. “One breath, on me, come on!”

Maybe this was the Universe’s way of saying ‘just let the man rest in peace’? Jack quickly shook those thoughts off. Shepard deserved rest, but not like this. Never like this.

After what seemed like centuries, when the Major dipped down for another mouth-to-mouth, just when he was about to close the gap between them, he froze. Silence filled the air.

“And?” Jack couldn’t take the suspense.

Coats waited a second more.

“He’s breathing. Few and very far between but that’s a breath.”

Jack felt something wet and warm slide down her cheeks. Damn the boy scout.

The Major looked around frantically, searching for something with his eyes. He looked at her.

“Find a thin piece of metal we could put him on,” he said, looking directly at her. When she didn’t move, he yelled in a harsh tone. “Go!”

Jack turned around and basically sprinted out of the opening, frantically looking for something of use. She spotted a piece that looked to be more or less decent, with convenient wires sticking out of one side.

She hauled the piece back to Coats, where the man was monitoring the state of Shepard with his hand over his face.

“Okay,” he said. “He’s unconscious. Help me move him.”

After a minute of awkward shuffling, they grabbed Shepard by his torso and gently pulled towards the entrance, Coats trying to push the metal under his body and Jack securing his neck and head.

“It’s gonna be fine, so fine, you’ll see,” she kept repeating over her friend’s head like a mantra.

They managed to pull Shepard about halfway out of the hole until they got stuck.

“What the fuck now?” Coats called out in annoyance.

It turned out Shepard’s right arm was stuck under some more rubble.

“Alright,” the Major said, squatting down and pushing his finger under the piece of metal that was trapping the Commander. “I lift, you pull his hand out. On three.”

He counted down, Jack pulled and… she suffocated the sudden urge to purge her last meal from her stomach.

The hand was massacred, barely holding onto Shepard’s body. Without thinking much, not wanting to dwell on the sight, Jack pushed the Commander’s arm onto the metal he was laying on and got up, ready to pull the whole thing out of the hole.

They took a while to transport the Commander to the opening in the floor. Coats was holding one hand over Shepard’s face, making sure he was still breathing, and pushing the contraption with the other, while Jack pulled, holding the wires.

When Coats called out to Wrex that they yes, they found him, yes, he was unconscious, very unstable and that he had no idea how to get him down, Jack was kneeling next to Shepard, keeping tabs on his very shallow breath and worrying her ass off.

Despite so many close calls they had together, she’s never seen the man so battered. Maybe defeating the Reapers truly was more than any man could handle.

Wrex managed to get them all down safely.

Shepard’s trip down was the trickiest one, seeing how he had to lay flat, but the Krogan gave them a showing of his biotic skill, managing to get Shepard and the metal plate he was on down without any issues.

When Jack’s feet hit the ground, as the last person back from the upper level, she realized the team from the shuttle was already back. Miranda and McKelly and Coats were nearly sprinting back to the spacecraft with Shepard on the sheet of metal like on a stretcher.

The shuttle soon took off with everyone on board, along with Admiral Anderson’s body wrapped in a tarp the mass effect cores were previously nailed down to the floor with.

Coats organized the different crew members to stabilize Shepard’s body through weightlessness and as soon as the shuttle was out of the Crucible, he looked at Miranda?

“Did it work?” He rasped.

The brunette nodded her head at him with minimal triumph, her face filled with worry. She concentrated on the co-pilot's controls, taking quick glances back at Shepard every couple of minutes.

The ride back down was both the longest and shortest one in Jack’s life. As soon as gravity caught on, the team set Shepard down on the floor of the shuttle and before she knew it, Jack saw a team of doctors running at the now landing spacecraft full speed, carrying a stretcher and medkits.

As soon as the door opened, the makeshift EMTs pushed everyone aside and took over Shepard’s care, taking him out of the spacecraft, putting him on the stretcher and carrying him out and away, surrounded by a dense atmosphere of urgency. One of them took a glance at the body covered with a tarp, but Coats simply shook his head and all was clear.

Jack blinked a couple of times, watching the medics disappear between buildings, probably taking Shepard back to the makeshift hospital. That’s when she realized that that was where she left her students.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts and jumped into a maddened sprint, powered by a strong urge to protect.

She had to make sure Shepard was going to be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm late again, incredibly sorry for that!  
It was a loooooong chapter and it took me ages to write, but I didn't want to chop it down into two. Sorry for the long wait.  
I hope you enjoy it! :D


	11. Chapter 11

_Kaidan_

The airlock slid open.

Liara pointed her contraption at the sky and Kaidan held his breath, just in case the air turned out to be poisonous.

The Asari kept glancing between the machine and a piece of paper on her lap, where she continued jotting down some information.

After a while, when Kaidan didn’t think he could hold his breath anymore and was about to gasp for air, she motioned for the soldiers to close the door. With the accompanying sound of grunting, swearing and mechanical screeches, they managed to get the damn thing closed. By that time Kaidan was drenched in sweat and wanted to take the armour off as soon as possible. He looked at Liara.

“Got what you needed?” He said loudly, enough for his voice to get through the helmet without the speakers in it. Liara nodded without a word.

“When will you know what we’re dealing with?”

She didn’t look up from her notes, already sinking into the data.

“A couple of minutes. I need to calculate the contents, but it shouldn’t take long. It’s just percentages after all.”

Kaidan nodded.

With James’s help, they all managed to get out of the airlock and close it behind them. As much as Kaidan wanted to get out of the armour, he figured it was better to stay in it until Liara was ready to give them the atmosphere contents, in case they needed to get out there protected. The tilt of the Normandy was beginning to annoy him and Kaidan was sure the rest of the crew didn’t appreciate it either. They had to get out of the ship and learn what caused the old girl to get stuck in this precarious position.

Liara set her contraption down by the ridge circling the inactive galaxy map and began counting and James disappeared below deck, probably to shed his armour and go back to helping Cortez.

The Major sat down against the wall, next to the airlock, helmet off, sweating and feeling all levels of miserable. The melancholy of the situation was starting to catch up with him again now that he didn’t have any pressing matters to attend to. He was sure there were millions of tasks he could help out with, but the moment his mind was no longer occupied, the thoughts went right back to worrying about Shepard.

He was tired of the war, much like everyone else, he suspected. The end of it seemed so close back on Earth, but being stuck down here now, not knowing how far from home they were or if the Reapers have truly been destroyed, the Major had to figure it was just their luck. Rest and retirement seemed more impossible than any of the things they’ve pulled so far. More difficult than the action on Rannoch, finding the Leviathan, or winning at poker with James and Garrus.

Kaidan chuckled to himself, then his face fell. He wondered if the simpler times were ever going to come back. Maybe they haven’t tried hard enough. Or maybe rest wasn’t destined for them and they could either work for tomorrow or die.

He glanced to the side.

Joker was no longer in his seat. Someone must have helped him down to the mess hall, possibly at the order of doctor Chakwas. The woman was a godsend. Kaidan hoped she’d take care of the Normandy's pilot. For all the crew knew, Jeff just lost a loved one. That wasn’t something to be glossed over.

The Major bit into the inside of his cheek painfully, frowning.

Joker’s demeanour earlier today seemed very understandable all of a sudden and Kaidan regretted the harsh words that fell from his mouth. He berated himself, just like many times before when he messed up in his career. Being upset at life didn’t give him an excuse or a free pass to be an asshole to anybody. If there was anything he’s learned through all the tough situations in his life was that restraint was a lifesaver and he intended to exercise it now as well.

After all, it was the lack of it that made him lose the most important things he had. Like Rahna at BAaT, or Shepard on Horizon.

Kaidan sighed, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. It felt like the armour was cooking him alive.

This was probably going to be the most challenging mission he’s been part of yet.

…

Liara showed up with her calculations earlier than expected.

Her eyes were glistening in the Normandy’s red backup light. She looked tired, but seemed to employ the same technique of dealing with loss and worry as Kaidan - she kept busy. Productivity was never a problem with her and now the Asari worked twice as hard. The same thing happened when the Reapers hit Thessia. Kaidan didn’t see her for two full weeks when she stayed in her office, working on one Shadow Broker’s deal or another.

Kaidan picked himself up off the ground. He didn’t bother trying to take on an authoritative stance, however.

“Whatcha got?” He rasped at her when she was close enough to make out his words.

“A lot of nitrogen, around seventeen per cent oxygen and some other minuscule elements, none of which will kill any of us.”

Kaidan sucked in a hissing breath.

“Seventeen? Shit, kinda low.”

Liara nodded.

“It is only estimations. I can not calculate the makeup of the atmosphere with complete certainty. I did take, as humans call it, a grain of salt into consideration.” She paused for a second, looked down at her notes, then back up at Kaidan again. “If I am incorrect in the wrong direction, I won’t be the only blue creature on this ship.”

The joke bordered around tragic and hilarious.

“Well,” Kaidan turned around and approached the cockpit window as if looking at the lush greenery and blue sky was supposed to ake him any more certain about what he was going to do next. “Let’s hope you’re off by at least one per cent in the right direction,” he murmured. The Major’s head snapped back to Liara and he drilled a stare full of intent into her skull.

“Let’s call the crew.”

…

The whole team, spare for Joker, gathered at the area surrounding the airlock.

Kaidan’s plan of him walking out of the Normandy and onto the surface of the planet was met with a lot of pushback when he revealed it to the crew. Garrus and James started arguing that it was stupid and risky over the heads of Cortez, the Doctor and engineer Adams, the first of which just stood in shock, while the other two exchanged meaningful glances.

“Listen,” Kaidan spoke softly after the initial commotion died down. “Have you ever known me to have a death wish?”

The silence that followed his words were broken only by Garrus, who murmured:

“No, but…” and the words that were left unsaid were enough for Kaidan to get a good idea of what the crew must have inevitably talked about without him present.

“Alright, well,” he continued, partway wanting to see the concern visible on their faces as sweet, but also wanting to strangle Garrus, even though he didn’t fully know if it was possible with the Turian’s exoskeleton. “Just like I didn’t have one before, I don’t have one now.”

He threw his arms out to his sides in a gesture of exasperation.

“Look, I know this is a tough situation, alright? I feel it. I’m pretty sure you feel it, too. But…” he gritted his teeth for a second and looked down, before continuing. “We have no other option. Tech can’t solve this one for us so it’s trial and error. None of us going out there and putting our lives on the line makes any sense. None of the lives here are any less or more important than mine. It’s a volunteer situation and I volunteer. Simple as that.”

He was saying it mostly to calm the crew. He didn’t feel so casual and cold about death of anoxia, but he figured that’s what the crew needed. They probably knew it was mostly for show, too. But while at war, there were never too many words of assurance going around.

Part of him believed it, as well. It was a job that needed doing and the Major was pretty sure that doing what needed to be done was all he knew at this point.

James looked very displeased but settled down under Kaidan’s iron stare.

None of the other crewmates volunteered and the Major wasn’t particularly surprised. Nobody gets used to laying their life on the line. In their line of work, you did it over and over, and each time made you the more aware just how much you didn’t want to die. Everyone had their breaking point and Kaidan could understand the unwillingness to do it again, especially now that the peaceful end of it all seemed so close.

“Alright,” Kaidan spoke, shrugging lightly. “James, could you?”

The young marine nodded and pulled one side of the inner airlock door open.

As Kaidan was about to lower himself into it, he felt a weight placed on his armoured shoulder. He tilted his head back and saw Vakarian staring back at him.

“You didn’t really think I’d let you pull a stunt like that alone, did you?” Garrus asked and slid down into the airlock right behind Kaidan before the human had the chance to protest. He shook his head, slightly amused.

“I don’t think it’s _my_ deathwish we should be worried about,” he said. The turian chuckled, mandibles twitching lightly.

“Mmm-well, let’s just say I got used to having the back of a human with self-destructive tendencies.”

Alenko rolled his eyes as they got in position to inch the outer airlock door open.

“You realise we’re most probably going to be fine, right?”

“Oh, but this will make a great story later.”

The metal succumbed to the pulling and inched open to reveal a line of lush, strange plants. A wave of chilly air hit the Major’s face. When Kaidan leaned from behind the wall, he noticed that the Normandy must have gotten stuck on a hilltop, because what he found before his eyes were most certainly treetops. And a lot of them. A jungle’s worth to be precise.

The human and Turian exchanged glances and took a step out of the airlock, between the weird-looking, vine-like, leafy plants that lined the soil. They walked a couple of meters away from the ship, testing the footing as they went.

Kaidan was holding his breath the whole time and upon taking a look at Garrus, he noticed the Turian was doing the same thing.

They stopped, looking at each other. Kaidan raised his eyebrows at Vakarian, wanting to ask ‘so, what now’?

Garrus shrugged, his mandibles flared and then, he nodded. He hummed out what sounded like a choked up countdown and on the third hum, they both took a breath in.

A scent of wet soil, decomposing leaves and a pile of rotting durians hit Kaidan’s nostrils. Garrus flinched and made a displeased noise.

They stood there for a minute or two, waiting for death to come knocking, but it never did. They exchanged glances again.

“Well,” Garrus said, elongating the word like he tended to do. “This was… underwhelming. Are you feeling death approach yet?”

“I hate to disappoint you, Garrus, but I’m only breathing a bit faster.”

“Damn. And here I was, hyping myself up. You’d figure if something smelled this bad, it would have the power to put you out of commission, too.”

Kaidan turned to him and punched his shoulder playfully with a balled-up fist.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be able to incorporate this rancid smell into your story somehow.” Vakarian rolled his eyes, and the corner of the Major’s mouth inched up ever so slightly.

He then turned back around to face the ship, where, just as he suspected, the whole crew was plastered to the window of the cockpit, looking at the two of them. He raised a 'thumbs up' and saw the commotion and excitement spread inside of the ship.

“Right.” He turned back to Garrus, who looked to be entranced by the strange leaves they were standing in. “Let’s go check out what the girl got caught on, shall we?” He said, tapping Vakaran on his bent back. When Garrus didn’t react, Kaidan spoke:

“Seen anything like this before?”

Vakarian shook his head.

“Not once. And I’ve been around.”

He then straightened his back and motioned towards the back of the ship.

As they walked along the hull, Kaidan kept tripping over the vines that covered the ground. They caught on his shoes almost as if they were alive. He suspected that Garrus had a very entertaining show while walking behind him. He heard the Turian chuckle a couple of times, but every time he turned around to send him a death stare, the amusement was mysteriously gone from Vakarian’s face.

Walking down the side of the hull, it became very clear that the Normandy’s tail got caught on something and the poor girl’s behind was tilted upwards into the air. Kaidan couldn’t push the comparison to a beached whale out of his mind.

After a short while, they reached the back thrusters and that seemed to be where the crux of the issue was located.

The girl’s tail was suspended in the air slightly by a still unknown force. Whatever it was must have been sturdy if the ship’s position didn’t change throughout the last couple of hours they were stranded on this planet.

The soldiers split up. Garrus went right and Kaidan anxiously crossed under the ship’s belly to see what was happening on the other side. He traced his fingers along the metal hull, crouching as he went, all the while observing the surroundings and looking out for anything that could have rendered the Normandy in this state. Sometimes he had to get down on his knees or straight up crawl, where the viney plants were denser and taller.

When he finally got out the other side, his breathing was fast and he was starting to feel a little light-headed. He was sure it was because of the low oxygen content in the air and he did what they taught him during military training in preparation for situations lie this: he took long, calculated, deep breaths, trying to calm his heartbeat. He needed to make sure oxygen was reaching all parts of his body.

The Major got out from underneath the ship and took a couple of steps forward to take a better look at the engines. The view from up here was incredible. The jungle stretched far until it reached the horizon. The sun of the planet just began setting and the long, warm rays of light covered everything in sight with a delicate sheen. It was surely a sight to behold.

“Hell of a view,” Kaidan murmured to himself. He stood still for a second longer before turning around and getting back to his duties.

Taking a couple more steps back, he noticed what the Normandy got caught on.

“Aaaaah, Kaidan?” Garrus’s voice reached his ears from the other side of the ship.

“Yea, I see it!” He shouted back.

The tail and engines of the old girl were wrapped up in something very dark and stringy. Whatever it was, it wrapped around some of the trees behind the Normandy, enveloping them completely. The dark strings, which Kaidan assumed were vines, must have gotten tangled in the Normandy’s engines when they made their graceful slide down the planet’s surface.

There was just one question echoing in Kaidan’s brain. He rushed back to Garrus’s side, hoping to get better access to the vine situation from there. As soon as he poked his head out the other side, he realized that most of the crew was already there. He found Garrus with his eyes, letting James help him up.

“Why didn’t the Normandy cut those down on the descent?” He managed despite being out of breath. “What, are they made of metal or something?”

Garrus shook his head.

Samantha piped up from the back of the group:

“I have another question. What is this godawful smell?”

James looked around, sniffing intensely.

“I quite like it, actually,” he said innocently. Trainor shot him a half-amused, half-horrified state.

“Alright,” The Major spoke when he finally caught his breath. “Let’s look around for what we’re dealing with here. Adams, Tali, Gabby, Donnely, check the hull for damages.”

The crew divided into parts, with the engineering crew splitting off to assess the damage and the rest either following Garrus to the back of the Normandy or going to the other side of the ship to try and get to the vines from there. The Turian lead them between very dense trees that were bent in strange directions, undoubtedly caused by the weight of their ship hanging off them.

There was a clearing in front of them, most probably caused by the Normandy’s violent descent onto the plateau. As they drew closer and closer to it, the sight of the black vines began waking old memories in Kaidan’s head. The Major couldn’t quite place them, though. He took the last step forward from between the bushes and stopped on a trail of soil that was smoothed and ripped free of trees.

He stopped. James, Liara, Samantha and Javik who followed Garrus here did the same. Alenko cocked his head to the side and stared at the vines.

“Anybody have any clue what these could be?” Garrus quipped over his shoulder. The rest of the team shook their heads.

“There has been no mention of such a thing in my Cycle,” Javik informed them.

“It does not look like anything I’ve studied,” Liara was quick to follow. “However… If I could get in closer, maybe I could deduce the origin of those… vines.”

Kaidan nodded.

“Let’s make it happen,” he rasped and motioned at the group to follow him.

The next half an hour was spent on clearing a path to one of the black strings. The amount of work didn’t warrant the amount of time they took to complete it. Kaidan was sure it would have normally taken them about ten minutes to carve a decent path through the alien bushes, but the thin air caused them to take frequent brakes. Doctor Chakwas scolded them before exiting the ship that she was not about to deal with the whole crew suffering from tissue necrosis in their fingers and toes. After they were done, Kaidan sent most of the personnel back to the ship, to spare them further exposure to the thin air of the planet.

“We don’t want Doctor Chakwas to have to fix several blue fingers or toes,” he told them. They listened. Kaidan was sure the crew was playing nice with him because of Shepard.

Liara, James, Garrus and Tali were the only ones left planetside. They waited for the Asari to finish assessing what the vines trapping the Normandy were.

“Don’t you think you could help?” Garrus quipped to Tali. The Quarrian shook her head.

“It looks to be organic matter. I’m an engineer, not a botanist.” Her body language spoke: embarrassed. “Keelah, I have killed so many of the plants my friends have given me.”

The crew chuckled. Tali was definitely one to give up potential blackmail material unprompted.

After a couple of minutes, Liara made a victorious sound.

“I think I understand now!” She called out and whipped around to face the rest of the crew. “It’s not vines we’re looking at.”

Kaidan cocked an eyebrow.

“What is it, then?”

The Asari looked triumphant. Tired and miserable, but triumphant.

“It’s webbing.”

One could hear jaws dropping.

James sucked air in violently and cursed in Spanish, Tali whispered a quick Quarrian prayer, Kaidan pinched the bride of his nose and Garrus leaned back, looked up and said:

“Why can it never be anything nice?”

…

They couldn’t cut it with a blade. They tried. The knife they used got stuck in the sticky goo surrounding the webs and no amount of force could get it out. That was also the point when Kaidan advised extreme caution around the webbing.

It turned out that Garrus had some previous knowledge on how to deal with webs of giant spiders. He based his expertise off a couple of Rachni-connected missions he went on. However shady and imprecise his explanations were on why he was involved in said missions, he provided them with a solution to the problem. It was fire.

The Normandy sadly wasn’t equipped with flamethrowers, so the crew gathered anything of flammable nature and piled it up near the airlock, where Garrus, Kaidan and James carried it to the tail of the ship. Javik turned out to be having a hard time with the atmosphere of the planet and was ordered to refrain from physical exertion for the time being. The Major was surprised the Prothean listened to him. He knew Javik and Shepard had a relationship of mutual respect but that at the end of the day the Prothean was only helping them out of his hate for the Reapers. Now that they were most probably gone, his loyalties to the crew were technically over.

Tali gave them an estimate of how much possible explosions and flames the ship’s hull could take, after which she and the engineering team coordinated the strategic placing and pouring of oil and the leftover hammerhead antifreeze fluid, which surprisingly turned out to be flammable.

After a decent amount of work, when the star of the planet was only a sliver of light on the horizon, the creation was ready.

Kaidan ordered the whole crew to vacate the ship for the duration of the next phase of the operation.

“The tail will drop. It’s safer if you’re not there,” he told them while escorting them out the airlock.

With everyone gathered at a safe distance, Kaidan gave the sign. Tali, who was standing away from the rest of the team, nodded and lit a lighter. She touched it to the surface of an oil puddle at her feet that was connected via an oily trail with the webs. As soon as the surface caught fire, the Quarian dashed back to the rest of them.

It turned out to have been a great idea. The antifreeze fluid was more violently flammable than they anticipated.

Suddenly, a loud pop could be heard in the air. Something on the oil trail exploded and send flaming chunks of plants flying across the perimeter.

Garrus yelled:

“Scatter!”

And the whole crew dashed in different directions, some falling to the ground automatically.

Kaidan dropped among the plants, behind the nearby tree. He covered his head with his hands and tried to take up as little space as possible.

He heard two more loud explosions, then the air was filled with silence.

His head wandered up and he blinked a couple of times. It was just in time for him to be blinded by a sudden burst of flames that appeared at the tail of the Normandy.

“Shit,” he managed through gritted teeth.

The flames danced on the hull, reflecting in the polished plating and the whole display would have been beautiful if it wasn’t so worrying.

After a few seconds, a loud snap reached Kaidan’s ears.

One of the web pieces broke off the ship’s tail and go flying through the air, still burning. It hit the ground to the right of him and he heard screams of two people.

“God,” he said to himself. They were too close. He followed up the thought with a loud command. “Everybody, fall back! I said, fall back!”

As he was speaking, he shot up, eyed the other vines on the Normandy and launched forward, towards the place where he heard the screams.

When he was maybe halfway to the steaming vine, another popped off and soared through the air, coming right towards him. He felt the burn in his leg muscles as he forced himself into an even faster sprint. The vine was very close to his head, he almost felt the heat of it when he dropped to the ground and slid on the damp leaves. The end of the flaming web passed by the Major’s head by a couple of inches at maximum.

The soldier shot up again, dodged one more web piece and dropped to his knees next to two people who turned out to be Gabby and Kenneth. The male engineer was moaning in pain and holding his leg. The area was lit only by the burning webs on the Normandy but from what the Major could see, Donnely had a nasty burn on his thigh.

“Can you walk?” He demanded. The other man simply shook his head, gritting his teeth.

Kaidan breathed out a profanity. He looked at Gabby.

“I’ll take him, get to a safe distance!” He ordered and under his iron stare, she relented and ran for it.

The Major grabbed Donnely by the uniform jacket and his healthy leg and unceremonially threw him over his shoulders. Kenneth yelped in pain but clung to Kaidan’s shoulders.

As the older soldier stood up, he silently thanked the Alliance for having enough foresight to not give the engineering crew muscle growth stims. Donnely was rather light.

He heard another pop of web shooting off the ship behind him. Kaidan’s lungs burned, his fingers tingled and he was sure he would break a knee on one of the plants below his feet, but he didn’t care.

He lunged forward into the bushes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (＊╯_╰)  
I am amazingly late and have little excuses for that.  
I'm very sorry you had to wait this long. There were finals, Christmas, mental health issues and everything in between that made writing this long-ass chapter a nightmare but we got there in the end. I hope that despite the long break you're going to enjoy it, though!  
Very sorry again, I swear I'll be back to weekly updates after this point. Thank you for your patience and I hope you'll have a lovely 2020.  
If you'd like to see some more content of my doing, I have an art blog on Tumblr. You can find me there under thepixelagora. ^^


	12. Chapter 12

_Shepard_

Jack had no medical training and her presence in the hospital was very passive. She sat on one of the benches in the general area of the makeshift clinic and waited for any news from the doctors.

Her students were either getting treatment or helping with treating the wounded if they had any medical training. Jack was proud of them for the level of initiative and strength they were displaying.

They wheeled Shepard into surgery almost as soon as they landed and have been operating ever since. It’s been six hours. Jack was worried sick. She tried telling herself that it was because Shepard dying now would be her personal and professional failure, not to mention, it would be pretty stupid of him to do that, now that Jack and the rest went through so much hardship to get him down here, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t convince herself that was the only reason.

She knew she cared about Shepard, pretty much ever since he wouldn’t leave her alone in the Normandy’s cargo bay, but old habits of never admitting that someone is dear to you didn’t apparently want to let her off easily.

Jack also began to wonder if it was just gratitude and friendship she was experiencing, or if it could be something else.

Her brow furrowed.

Judging by her past experiences, she could have picked a worse object of admiration. Shepard was… caring, sweet and dedicated. Stable. Blissfully boring.

She chuckled. _I’m getting old, _she thought.

Shepard didn’t seem to have anyone back in the Cerberus days… But it’s not like he was very open about this stuff. There was this one commotion after they came back from Horizon where he was clearly miserable for a couple of days, but Jack didn’t participate in that mission and everyone who could know anything seemed to have eaten the same bag of ‘I won’t tell, don’t ask me’. And, well, there was that one party at his apartment on the Citadel. She didn’t technically see him get more romantic with anyone during that time. Shepard talked to everyone equally. There was that Alliance Major with a stick up his ass that seemed charmed by the Commander, judging by the puppy eyes he kept at John the whole time, but that didn’t exactly mean anything. Jack was drunk out of her mind and spent most of the night downstairs. She could have just been imagining things.

She never asked Shep how he felt about romantic relationships. The dude was really private in that aspect of his life. Who knows, maybe he was afraid?

Jack’s brow furrowed even further.

Was he even into women?

She rolled her eyes at her own thoughts.

_It’s not even certain he’ll live and you already think stuff like this, _she thought, angry at herself.

“You seem preoccupied,” Jack suddenly heard a voice behind her. “May I join you?”

She looked to her left to see Miranda standing there. She smiled lightly and nodded. The brunette sat down next to her and they both anxiously looked towards the curtain separating the makeshift surgery area from the rest of the hospital.

“Worried?” Miranda asked.

“Like hell,” was the response.

Miranda smiled lightly, but Jack could see the tension in her posture.

“Shepard has pulled through worse… Not much worse, but still worse. I’m sure he’ll be alright.”

Jack snorted, grateful for the distraction.

“I guess this whole circus isn’t an issue anymore now that you're here. You put him together once, you can do it again.”

Miranda’s face fell.

“Cerberus had access to the best medical technology and resources. This…” she looked around the broken-down building with holes in the walls which have been patched up with whatever people could find laying around. “This is something else. I doubt they even have tissue regeneration stims. Or bone implants. Or…”

She glanced at Jack and smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry. I overanalyze when I’m nervous.”

Jack nodded.

“S’okay,” she said. “I get it. When my guys were scattered all over the rubble and I didn’t know where they were, I was running around swearing and trying to lift things with my biotics. I got a nosebleed three times before I stopped.”

Miranda perked up a little and shifted her body to face Jack more.

“Oh, that’s right, you’re a teacher now. I have to say, out of all the things I expected you to be involved in after the Collector Base, this was the least likely scenario. How are your students?”

The other biotic motioned towards a couple of beds.

“They’re here. Crazy, but we didn’t lose anybody.”

She rested her elbows on her knees and leaned forward.

“Damn, I’m so proud of them. They held it together really well, seemed to take it to heart what I told them about barriers, lift and… Shit, I’m getting old.” She smiled and glanced at Miranda to see her doing the same.

“What about you, Lawson?” Jack quipped. “What have you been up to? There was only so much catching up we could do at Shep’s party.”

Miranda leaned back, crossed her legs and rested her hand in her lap, looking into the distance.

“Well… I’ve finally managed to dispatch my father. It feels great, I have to say, not having to run anymore or suspect him of somehow coordinating all of the nasty encounters in my life. Other than that…” she looked Jack in the eyes. “Been busy. Helping the Alliance, fighting the last bits of Cerberus, doing some intel work. All very important, I’m sure, but mostly just hard work.”

Jack nodded.

“Yea, I get that. What about-”

Her words were cut short when the curtain to the surgery area swung back and an Asari surgeon with very bloody hands exited and headed towards the other side of the building. Jack shot up and jumped up to her.

“How is he?!” She demanded.

The surgeon eyed the two women.

“Just a second, I will sanitise and be with you shortly,” she said and walked past them, navigating in the crowd in such a way to not touch anybody. Miranda stood up as well and waited alongside Jack to hear the news.

After a couple of minutes, the Asari came back, now considerably cleaner.

“How is he?” Jack repeated, calmer.

“First of all, who are you?” The doctor raised an eyebrow at the two other women. Miranda stepped up with an explanation.

“John’s… concerned friends. We would like to know how he’s doing.”

The doctor visibly relaxed and nodded.

“Would you like the general overview of what we had to lead with, or-”

“Details, doctor,” Miranda’s stare was stern. “We’re soldiers, we know the job. I was his… doctor once, I assure you this doesn’t even come close to what the man’s been through.”

Jack looked between the two women.

“Yea, doc. Lay it on us,” She said, folding her arms over her chest.

The surgeon glanced at them and shrugged lightly before continuing.

“I see. Well, what is there to say… He got here in pretty rough shape. Broken ribs, blood in lungs, crushed shins, torn connective and muscle tissue of the arm, parts of his armour melted into his skin, three broken vertebrae in the pelvic region, awful burns, cuts, blood loss.”

Jack sucked air in sharply. The Asari nodded at her.

“My words exactly,” she continued. “Unfortunately, we had to take off John’s right arm right below the elbow.”

“Shit,” Jack spat.

“Both of his legs were also shattered beyond saving, most of the tissue was deprived of oxygen for far too long to be salvageable… We had to take off both of his legs as well. The right one mid-thigh, the left one below the knee. Additionally, because of the broken spine, we don’t know if he even has feeling in them. We will only find out if he wakes up. I’m sorry. Not much more could be done.”

Jack stared in shock with a dumbfounded expression on her face while Miranda sat down with a resigned look. She glanced towards the surgery area. Shepard was still somewhere over there.

“Is he going to be alright?” Jack choked out.

The doctor sighed.

“I, unfortunately, can’t guarantee that. We put him in a medically induced coma. We’re breathing for him, he’s under constant monitoring and we’re providing the best care we can, but we simply don’t have enough technology to help him further. The next couple of days will be touch and go and the next hours will be decisive of whether he’ll make it or not.”

She sat down next to Miranda, placing her arm on the human biotic’s shoulder. Her face was gentle, calm and reassuring.

“He lost a lot of blood. We’ll do what we can.”

She glanced up at Jack and spoke in a lowered voice.

“Does he have any family or loved ones? Anyone we should try to inform?”

The human woman shook her head before speaking.

“None that I’m aware of.”

Miranda piped up.

“He has a mother, but she was with the fleet. We also… suspect a significant other, but it’s a similar situation. I suppose it’s just us now.”

The Asari nodded with understanding.

“Well, it’s on you, then. Be here for him. Talk to him. I’ve seen plenty of people who gave up on life after getting hurt this severely. Make him feel it’s going to be alright.”

The two women nodded and the surgeon stood up.

“I have a lot of patients to take care of, but I will be around if you have any questions. As soon as someone fixes the damn comm channels I’ll look into transferring him into an actual facility.”

The doctor turned away and was about to walk off, but managed to shoot the two women a glance over her shoulder.

“You can go in over there and see him. We cleaned up. Just trying to keep him in a more private area.”

Jack nodded. Damn, this was hard. She glanced at Miranda.

“We suspect a significant other?” She asked quietly. “Who’s we? And who is it?”

The other biotic motioned for Jack to follow her and started walking towards the curtain. Her step was not as confident as Jack’s memory could recall and she seemed unsure, as she manoeuvred around some other doctors who were leaving the surgery area. Lawson stopped right in front of the curtain. She turned to Jack. She was clearly stalling.

“Do you remember that other Alliance officer we got to meet at Shepard’s party?”

“The biotic?”

“Yes. He was the guy who refused to come with Shepard back on Horizon.”

Jack’s eyes widened in surprise.

“So that’s what it was about?”

Miranda nodded.

“I have reason to believe they reconnected. The whole crew seemed to share my suspicions back at the party.” The tone was dismissive, but an undertone of triumph could be detected.

The other woman frowned but didn’t comment. The boy scout with a potential boy scout boyfriend. Who would have guessed? She looked up at Miranda.

“Ready?” She whispered.

“As ready as I’ll ever be” was the response.

Miranda pulled the curtain open in one smooth motion.

Shepard was covered with a sheet, probably for warmth, from under which a literal army of tubes and lines was peeking out. The material dipped around Shep’s knees, where his legs were removed, the same happened around his right arm. Jack couldn’t see his body and she has witnessed a fair share of bloodied men in her time, but she had to admit that of the parts of Shepard she could see, he looked like death itself.

His face was bruised and swollen. A tube attached to a device standing next to the bed was coming out of his mouth and with steady hissing pumped air in and out of his lungs, making the man’s chest rise and fall. The hospital must have managed to get the emergency power grid up and running. A blood bag hung from an IV stand, as well as some other bags with some semi-clear liquids in them that Jack decided not to investigate.

Miranda and she settled around the bed in mild shock, not speaking. There was truly nothing that could make the situation less tense. No jokes could lift the atmosphere of the room or deflect the weight of the situation any longer.

To many, Shepard has always been unkillable. The story of his resurrection spread across the galaxy and made him nothing short of a legend. When Jack got Joker drunk once, he told her how death seemed to only piss Shepard off, how it could never stop him and that he was a fool for even considering that Alchera would be the Commander’s end.

Seeing him like this reminded Jack that he was just human, like the rest of them. An incredible, dedicated human, but definitely mortal. It was hard to look at and hard to think about.

Suddenly, a loud sound reached Jack’s ears. She perked up and turned around to look out into the main area of the hospital. She noticed a commotion around one of the beds. The words of one of the doctors reached her:

“Sir, you need to calm down.”

Suddenly, the patient shot up to a sitting position. He leapt towards the closest person standing at the bed. The female nurse was knocked on the ground with the impact of a heavy body. Jack saw the man reach for the nurse’s neck, squeezing his fingers around her throat.

The other doctors were trying to pull him off her but there was only two of them and the patient seemed to be in a fit of rage.

Jack didn’t think much.

She let herself loose in a mad sprint through the hospital and rammed her shoulder into the man, knocking him off the nurse who immediately began coughing and wheezing.

“Prangley, Kowalski!” Jack called out, picking herself up off the ground. The crazed man landed a bit further in a pile of some medical equipment and was trying to get up, eyeing the woman that attacked him with hate-filled eyes. He was practically howling, spit flying out of his mouth. He did not look normal.

A young man and a girl appeared behind him, looking around. As soon as they noticed Jack, their teacher called out:

“We need to restrain this man!”

Both nodded.

The patient stood up and without a second of pause flew towards Jack. She dodged him gracefully with a half spin and kicked one of his legs, making him lose his balance. She tried to punch him as well, but he slinked away. After dropping to the floor, he didn’t waste a moment and attacked again, going for her legs this time. She cussed and jumped to the side just in time to avoid being dragged to the floor.

A couple of doctors gathered around. They looked too scared to intervene.

Using the fact that the patient was focused solely on Jack, her students managed to get close enough to surprise him. The next time he turned his back to them to take another go at their teacher, Kowalski took a quick step forward and kicked the back of the patient’s knees, giving Prangley enough time to slam down on him from above and pin him to the ground. Jack, her other student and some of the doctors quickly joined.

“Jack, arm!” She heard Miranda call out from behind her and understood immediately. She managed to grab the flailing, spitting, howling patient by the wrist, yank his arm from underneath the pile of people and stretch it out for Miranda to get access to it.

The other biotic appeared, pinned the arm to the ground with her knee and put a mechanical injector up to his skin. The trigger clicked, a mechanical hiss could be heard and about thirty seconds later, which were filled with bloodcurdling screams of the man trapped below a group of people, he started calming down. After the doctors deemed him sufficiently sedated, the capture team was requested to move off him. They scooped him up and took to the bed. Jack hoped they would restrain him this time.

The same Asari surgeon from before approached Jack and Miranda again. The latter offered the injector back to her and the alien nodded, taking the device off her.

“Thank you for stepping in,” she said.

A couple of doctors were gathered around two members of medical staff; the nurse that got choked and a male doctor that apparently got bitten in the ear by the patient. He was bleeding profusely. Jack looked at the Asari.

“Any idea what that was?” She asked, waving off her gratitude. The Asari shook her head.

“No, the man was perfectly unconscious seconds before this episode.” Her brow furrowed. She looked puzzled and concerned.

“Whatever it was,” Miranda stepped in, looking suspiciously around the hospital’s main hall, seemingly surveying the beds and their occupants. “We have to notify Major Coats.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!  
We are a little over halfway through the story as far as I can tell. Thank you for all the amazing support I've received from you guys. This is my first project of this scale and I am absolutely stunned by the positive response so far. Thank you <3  
I hope you enjoyed the chapter and that you'll stick around for more :D


	13. Chapter 13

_Kaidan_

Kaidan dashed between the bushes, his thighs burning as he ran forward as fast as he could.

The vines lashed his shins and the engineer’s body weighed heavily on his shoulders. Donnelly moaned and yelped in pain every once in a while, but Kaidan had no time to worry about it. He couldn’t see anything.

He wanted to put a safe distance between them and the ship in case it was to explode. An unlikely event, Kaidan was aware, but he hadn’t crawled up the ranks by being reckless. He wasn’t about to start being, either.

He managed to run forward for a couple of seconds before he lost footing. He felt himself fall. Letting go of the engineer, he tumbled to the ground, expecting to stop. That didn’t happen. He kept rolling and quickly realized the terrain was sloped. A pang of worry about Kenneth echoed in his chest.

After a while, his body came to a rapid halt. He collided with something and the impact forced the breath out from his lungs. The Major coughed, graned and turned over onto his back. He felt the object he hit with his hands because the overwhelming darkness made it impossible to judge what it was with eyesight.

“A bloody tree…,” he said to himself under his breath. He instinctively looked around for the engineer, but his eyes couldn’t adjust to the absolute lack of light. They must have ended up under very thick foliage. “Donnelly?!” He called out.

There was silence, then a sound of a heavy object falling through leaves came from the Major’s right. The loud thud was followed by a groan and a swearword spoken in a thick, Irish accent.

“Are you alright, Donnelly?” Kaidan asked.

“Aye, Major, in one piece.” The man’s voice was weak and sounded strained. “Got a burn, the feckin’ web made sure o’ that.”

“Hang on, I have some medigel.”

Kaidan crawled towards the engineer on all fours, feeling out the terrain with his hands. It wasn’t a gracious position but he didn’t care. His protective instincts made him push towards his crewman.

“I can’t see you, Kenneth, talk to me.”

The engineer cleared his throat and was silent for a second, clearly having no idea what to say.

“Tell me about the technical status of the Normandy,” Alenko suggested.

That got him talking. The engineer started a tirade about the life support systems, backup power, couplings and other technical whathaveyou. Kaidan wasn’t focusing on that. He just wanted to get to Kenneth.

It was a difficult task, as the terrain proved to be treacherous. After a minute or two of crawling through vines and bushes and having to round a couple of trees, Kaidan’s hand made contact with some fabric. Kenneth shrieked.

“It’s alright,” the Major rasped. “It’s me.”

“Jaysus, I thought ‘twas some alien bug or somethin’.”

“How’s the leg?”

“Hurts like hell, but I’ll live.”

Kaidan nodded automatically, even though Donnelly couldn’t see him and reached into the pocket of his uniform. He closed his fingers around a packet of medigel. It was cool to the touch in a reassuring way. The Major counted his stash with his fingers. He expected to start running short in a bit if this were to continue.

“I’ll hand you medigel now, alright?” He spoke. The engineer confirmed and after a bit of fumbling their hands met, then passed the packet along. Kaidan would have preferred to apply it himself, having had medical training in the Alliance Academy, but since he couldn’t see anything, he had to rely on Kenneth and his ability to feel where it hurt. After a couple of very long seconds of silence, the sound of a packet being ripped open filled it, followed by a sigh of relief, which slipped from the engineer’s lips.

Kaidan took a second to assess their situation.

He had only a very vague idea where they were. He knew the general direction of the ship, but nothing apart from that. He was also unsure whether they would be able to get back to it. The darkness, coupled with Kenneth’s bad leg and the slope they rolled down. Kaidan felt from his hurting ribs and back the hill was covered in thick, slippery vines, roots and leaves.

He also didn’t look kindly upon the idea of staying here. Sure, they hadn’t seen any of the creatures that made the webs the Normandy got caught in, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be around. He wanted to avoid contact with them, especially now, when he had no weapons, no biotics limited eyesight and, most importantly, an injured member of the crew who couldn’t protect himself.

He also worried about the status of the rest of the crew. He had no idea where they were.

“Shit,” he spat. Kenneth shuffled somewhere to the side.

“What’s the situation, Major?”

Kaidan frowned. It was a reflex, but Kenneth couldn’t see it and Alenko decided it was a good thing.

“We can’t stay here. I don’t know what nocturnal creatures live in this jungle. We’ve got to try climbing uphill.”

From the sound the other man-made, Kaidan deduced that Donnelly wasn’t happy with the idea, but ultimately, they had no choice.

After a few tries that unanimously ended with Donnelly sliding down the hill again after only a couple steps, and a failed attempt at Kaidan carrying the engineer up the hill, they abandoned the idea altogether.

“This is no use, Major,” the engineer managed to gasp between pants. From the sound of it, he seemed to be in a decent amount of pain. Kaidan was hoping they’d get to doctor Chakwas in time for her to take a look at Kenneth’s leg. Alenko would hate for the man to lose it.

The Major was about to respond when a sudden sound reached him from the left.

Leaves of the thick foliage were being rustled by something. Kaidan couldn’t feel any wind, so it couldn’t have been that.

“Don’t make a sound,” he hissed between his gritted teeth. He immediately tensed as well, his body stilling as he listened into the quiet of the night, ready to catch any more sounds. The Major’s brain was quick to form all sorts of terrible albeit relatively realistic possible scenarios. Giant snakes, wild predators, even the Rachni. In his mind, he cursed the fact he couldn’t see.

Donnelly, thank god, was a smart man. He seemed to catch onto the danger of the situation they were in quickly and stilled as well, making minimal sounds.

The sound repeated itself, this time closer. Kaidan felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

For a few seconds, there was silence, and then a loud screech ripped the air open just a few paces away from the men. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem happy.

Kaidan shot up off the ground and lunged towards where he believed Donnelly had been.

This was a new one, running in complete darkness from an unknown enemy. They had a training like this back at the Alliance academy, but Kaidan didn’t remember much of it, for lack of practice.

He tripped and collided with Donnelly’s body. The man let out a yelp of fear and surprise but let Kaidan manhandle him for the second time today without any protest.

The ear-piercing squeal tore through the air again, a hurried staccato of what sounded to be millions of legs getting closer.

The Major gripped the engineer by the uniform and hoisted him up as quickly as he could and threw him over his shoulder.

His tired legs protested at the exertion, his lungs beginning to burn again but he didn’t let it slow him down. Kaidan lunged forward, hearing the creature follow in a hurried pursuit.

He had no idea where he was going and the vines and leaves were providing a navigational challenge. The Major felt them lash his shins with an incredible force, leaving painful stinging behind, but he ran as fast as he could. Donnelly was squealing on his shoulder, clinging to his back and arm as much as he could.

A sudden waft of fresh, moving air touched his face from the right side and Kaidan could swear he saw faint light through a mass of leaves in the distance in front of him. He forced himself to run faster, the alien behind him roaring all the while. He could protect himself better if he saw anything. Fighting a creature he knew nothing about in complete darkness with no weapons handy was suicide.

The creature was getting closer with every second.

Suddenly, Kaidan felt a shot of pain radiate through his back. He arched in pain, grunted and felt his body lose balance. He knew he was falling a split second before he hit the ground. Donnelly flew off his shoulder and thumped to the ground somewhere off to the side.

Kaidan rolled over instinctively and heard a sound of something sharp digging into the ground where he was laying just a split second ago. He had no clue what it could have been, but he had his guesses. A leg, paw or a large claw maybe. Whatever it was, it meant to kill him, but failed.

The alien roared in the dark, dissatisfied. The momentum of its pursuit threw it over Kaidan’s body and it was sent flying forward, unable to stop.

The Major shot back to a standing position. Through the screams of the monster, he managed to make out Donnelly’s voice, who was swearing and yelling uncontrollably at this point. The soldier dashed in that direction, reaching out to grab the man again. His back was burning and he felt something wet drip down it but he had no time to worry about it now.

He supported Kenneth’s weight by tossing the man’s arm over his shoulders and lifted him, immediately turning to run towards the clearing in the trees.

By this point, the Alien had recovered from its predicament and roared again. Kaidan could hear it in front of them, charging at the men.

“Shit,” he cursed and dropped to the ground, pulling Donnelly down along with him. The engineer yelped in pain but endured.

The alien flew over their heads and Kaidan could feel its claws lightly grazing the uniform fabric on his back. Without wasting a second, he picked Kenneth up again and barreled towards the clearing.

It was so close now. A hundred meters at most.

The alien was in pursuit quickly, gaining on them from what it sounded like. With every step Kaidan took, the visibility was getting better and it was easier to run through the thick foliage.

“Oh, feckin’ hoor!” Donnelly screamed between heavy breaths, hanging onto Kaidan’s forearm, trying to run as quickly as he could. “Jaysus!”

They broke through the line of trees and onto a sloping hill to the accompanying sound of the alien’s screech. In the distance, Kaidan could barely see several ragged, large shapes he assumed to be rocks and turned to run towards them. They could offer some protection from the creature chasing them.

With everything happening so fast, the Major didn’t have time to look at the moss-covered stones they leapt between once they reached them.

Kaidan took a sharp turn, practically throwing the engineer behind one of the mossy formations and leaping behind him to cover. His back pressed against moist plants and the sting of a wound coming in contact with a foreign object painfully reminded him of his injury. He felt the scent of wet soil hit his nostrils. There was something else to the smell, but he had no time to analyse. The area around them was silent, spare for a distant pattering of the creature’s legs hitting the ground.

Things seemed safe but it could only have been an illusion. The Major had no idea what kind of alien intelligence he was dealing with.

After a few seconds of wheezing and trying to pump as much oxygen into his tingling fingers, Kaidan took a gander from behind the moss-covered structure, squinting to catch any details in the very faint moonlight. The planet seemed to have two of those, both very small and reflecting little of the star’s rays.

The grassy plain looked empty. The alien couldn’t be seen but that didn’t mean it wasn’t here.

As if on command, a very familiar screech answered Kaidan’s doubts. Its origin seemed to come from a considerable distance, close to the line of trees where Donnelly and Kaidan were just minutes ago.

Kaidan’s brow furrowed.

Why didn’t it follow them out here? It had them practically on a platter.

His mind immediately filled with images of thresher maws. He briefly wondered if the reason the alien let them go was that they entered the territory of something bigger and hungrier.

His thoughts were brought to a halt by Kenneth’s voice.

“Er, Major, you need ‘ta see this.”

Kaidan looked to his right to face the engineer. The man was on his knees, facing one of the mossy formations, seeming very engrossed in ripping the plants off it. As soil and grass began to come off it, they revealed the surface underneath.

“Look, sir,” Donnelly wiped what he uncovered down with the sleeve of his uniform.

Kaidan approached, bringing his face close to the surface Kenneth was pointing to. A first he had no clue what he was looking at but realized two things rather quickly.

He was looking at engraved writing and what he felt in the air a while ago was rust.

“2.157, _Shanxi_,” he mouthed in a whisper.

…

The two men spent as little time as they could ripping moss off a few structures to confirm their theory.

Despite the rush, the men took at least an hour digging between the mossy mounds.

Partial engravings were present on almost all of them, citing dates, names and territories. After discovering the fourth structure with a very familiar sounding name, Kaidan having watched Kenneth’s back with nervous glances over his shoulder, the engineer limped away from the mossy mounds to take a better look at them.

“I’ll be damned, Major,” he whispered. “We’re looking at a field of space junk - satellites and probes, some dating back to before the first contact war.

Kaidan scanned the horizon with a careful stare. His back still burned and he was still unconvinced of their safety. It was still dark and the memories of the alien chasing them not so long ago were still fresh in his mind.

“Recognize any of them?” He asked over his shoulder. Donnelly shook his head.

“Just the make. We’ve got some Turian designs and I’m pretty sure I saw some Asari probes off to the side. Maybe two were human.”

“And none of the names sound familiar?”

“No, Major. The registry of lost space junk is long and mostly unimportant. I’m sure we’d find all of these in there, but…”

“We have no access to it. Right.”

“Exactly.”

In his mind, Kaidan already began drafting the route back to the ship. He turned around after a moment, having made a silent decision.

“Alright Donnelly, here’s how it’s gonna be. We leave for the Normandy in the morning. Until then, let’s figure out if anything here can still be useful.”

…

The two soldiers cleared the hill a few hours after the dawn.

It took them considerably longer to make the trip back compared to their mad dash away from the ship. The path wasn’t as straight forward as before. Everything looked different in faint sunlight and the Major tried to avoid taking the same route in fear of crossing the alien monster’s territory again. Apart from that, the medigel on Kenneth’s leg burn started easing off.

“Kaidan, damn,” Garrus said, walking spryly up to the Major. He was standing next to the airlock a short while ago as if he was waiting for them. “We were starting to worry here,” he motioned to behind his back where the ship was located.

“How’s the Normandy?” Kaidan asked, after explaining what happened to them. “And the crew?”

Garrus’ mandibles twitched lightly.

“She’s fine, minor scrapes and pieces of a molten hull but nothing we can’t fix,” he assured. “You were the last ones to make it out of the forest.”

“Any wounded?”

“A few burns here and there mostly on Vega,” here the Turian let out a rumbling chuckle, “but doctor Chakwas has been handling it like a saint.”

He glanced at Donnelly who was still hanging from Kadian’s shoulder. He promptly took over helping the engineer walk, which Kaidan was grateful for. The Major was starting to feel exhausted.

“Garrus,” the Major said once the men were all in the airlock, getting ready to open the interior side of it. “Back there in the forest we found… damn, I don’t even know what that could be. A graveyard full of probes and satellites. Kenneth said some of them look very old.”

Garrus hummed a low tone. He looked surprised at the discovery, but having travelled across the galaxy, some space junk on a remote world didn’t seem that big of a deal.

“Hmm, Tali might be able to tell if we can use any of the parts there.”

“Exactly. I want to take a small team tomorrow, see what we can find.” Kaidan gripped a handle on the right airlock door.

“Right, I should warn you,” Garrus said in a hushed tone, mirroring the Major. “I heard some of the crew talking about a small… memorial service for Shepard.” His mandibles flared uncomfortably. “Thought you should know.”

Kaidan felt a sharp sting tear open his chest all over again.

He appreciated the Turian giving him a heads up even though he was starting to hate the way everyone talked about John around him. Everyone was so careful and gentle and full of pity it had him wanting to punch something.

His preferred way of going about the problem would be to get drunk, sleep and throw himself into a sixteen-hour shift the very next day, do anything to forget about it for at least a bit. That’s what he did after Alchera.

He knew the situation was different now and he couldn’t simply forget, but it didn’t mean the constant tiptoeing everyone seemed to be doing around him pissed him off any less.

He didn’t give Garrus more of a response over a low hum and focused on opening the airlock.

John wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. The Commander doesn’t simply _die._

…

Kaidan stared at the plaque that was presented to him.

There were very few things in his life that he wanted to do less than put this one up on the wall. But, alas, the crew expected it.

Although he was notified in advance about the “memorial service” for Shepard, which he registered through having to push repulsion and anger down, he felt no more prepared for it. The crew-wide belief that the Commander was dead seemed uncanny to him. Maybe it was easier to think that instead of worrying about John. It made sense, seeing how they had about a thousand problems to worry about, ready to be picked and chosen from, right at their disposal, but it hurt.

It hurt that the people who should be the ones to know John better than this stopped believing in him out of convenience. The Alliance Military did teach their soldiers to focus on the task at hand and move on from the loss of colleagues as quickly as possible if the situation was still dire. And it was. Kaidan didn’t doubt that. He just had hoped that affinity would sometimes win with habit.

As soon as he stepped out of the crew’s quarters, where he cleaned himself up a bit after all the physical exertion outside and had his back checked out by doctor Chakwas, Liara handed him a carbon fibre slip with John’s name on it.

He wanted to scream at the Reapers that they brought the situation in the universe to such a bad place that the crews of warships had to preemptively make remembrance plaques for their crewmen in case a ceremony like this had to take place.

His knuckles whitened as he gripped the plaque hard in his hands, gritting his teeth, his stare burning holes in the name laser-carved on it.

_Don’t leave me behind_.

The crew was standing around him in perfect silence, mourning expressions on their faces. Some of their heads were cast down. A couple of anxious, silent tears were shed. They were all taking glances at him, waiting for him to press the carbon fibre strip to the wall, the adhesive strip ready to activate in contact with the metal. Donnelly was among them as well, patched up by the doc, looking somewhat out of it.

Kaidan didn’t move for a long time, apparently just long enough for Liara to start getting worried. She placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. He appreciated it. He really did. But he believed she was completely missing the point.

Kaidan sighed. Heavily. Then he made his choice.

He took a step forward. His hand shook slightly when he angled the plaque down, resting it on the floor so it was leaning to the side of the memorial wall.

_I will not put your name up there, _he thought, to himself or John, he didn’t know. _Not until I’m certain._

The crew didn’t make a sound as he turned around and walked past them, directing his steps to the ladders leading to the upper decks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been a long time.  
This chapter has been crafted through incredible pain for some reason. It did not want to come together and I had to force it to happen, but we're finally here. It's a bit longer so I hope that makes up for the time you guys had to wait for an update, even though it totally doesn't.  
I hope you've enjoyed, feel free to chat me up in the comments and the next chapter should come soon enough!  
(I promise no more four-month breaks!)


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of death is mentioned in this chapter. It is a dream, the events aren't real even in this fictional universe, but if you're sensitive to that kind of thing, please be warned.  
A new chapter though, going strong. I hope you enjoy!

_Shepard_

It’s been about a week since the events at the makeshift clinic took place.

Jack spent most of her time helping with the cleaning and rescue efforts, letting Coats order her around for now. The Grissom Academy students helped out wherever they could, some providing assistance at the hospital, some assisting her with her tasks.

Coats had been informed about the patient’s outburst at the clinic. Over the following days, more similar cases began popping up, but the events were being filed away for a more opportune time. There were too little soldiers available to investigate the possible causes of the happening. As preventative measures, all comatose patients were placed in separate rooms if possible and the Major dispatched some of his men to hospitals as basic security, but that was pretty much the extent of what he could do at this point.

Miranda’s efforts in the shuttle stabilized the orbit of the Citadel and now the station hung in the sky over them, destroyed, menacing and quiet – a constant reminder of what everyone has lost so far and what they yet had to lose. Hauling the Citadel to a safer distance away from the planet was put on hold for the time being.

Whenever she had the time, Jack would visit Shepard at the field hospital.

The place was already looking better, having repaired most of the lights and cleaned up rubble completely. The smell confirmed the environment was as sterile as it could be. Nurses and doctors of all available races kept buzzing around the place, jumping between the different patients restlessly.

With each passing day, more and more new patients were being reported found and admitted to the hospitals all over London. The search parties worked tirelessly and so, by extension, the medical professionals had to step up their game more than tenfolds.

After a period of touch and go with his health, Shepard was placed in a private room, still in a medically induced coma, his name not present on the patient chart. It was done at Coats’ request, who explained to the staff that he didn’t feel qualified enough to decide whether the information about the heroic Commander being alive was something he could freely relay to the troops.

Shepard’s assignment had been shrouded in mystery and sectioned off by a lot of proverbial red tape, so the Major dealt with the situation as if he were handling a huge Turian bomb. He waited patiently until someone more qualified showed up.

That someone was the rest of the Alliance Fleet and the senior officers.

With so many aliens present on Earth and no communication with their homeworlds, tensions regarding hierarchies, living situations, assignments and, most importantly, the supply of dextro-amino food, were rising quickly. The technical officers of all races worked together on bringing the communication systems back online, but the progress was slow and breakthroughs far between.

From what Jack knew, some form of temporary leadership, consisting of representatives of all the races present in London was slowly beginning to form, but with limited communications coordination of everything remained a big challenge.

Jack walked into the hospital, head swirling from the exhaustion of a whole day spent on clearing rubble off streets. The Krogans were doing a fantastic job at that.

The nurses simply nodded at her and didn’t acknowledge her any further. They knew her by this point and were aware of who they were visiting.

The biotic walked through a short corridor and into Shepard’s room.

It was lit by flashing lights of the life support system and a singular lamp that hung above the bed. There was usually some sunlight getting into the room through a small window located close to the ceiling, but it was almost dusk now and the strip of the red-lit sky visible from the door did little to illuminate the inside of the building.

Jack sat down in a chair placed next to the bed.

She would usually spend about fifteen minutes here, tell Shepard about her day, then leave to crash in her bed. It felt awkward at the beginning, talking to a seemingly empty room, but she got used to it quickly. She also didn’t care if anyone heard them. She was here for a friend and that’s all that mattered to her.

Shep got cleaned up as soon as they brought him in from the shuttle a week ago, but you couldn’t tell it to be the case straight away. His face was blooming with bruises and cuts, which were clearly visible against the pale of his skin. He would be borderline unrecognizable if it weren’t for his sharp cheekbones and the clear line of his nose.

The doctors were using whatever regeneration stims they could find to help the healing process and keep Shepard’s body from collapsing and Jack believed it was slowly starting to work. The Commander’s face was no longer half as swollen as it had been initially and the bruises began taking on a yellow and green colour instead of the starting blue and purple. The nurses seemed to display reserved optimism about his condition.

“An impeccable will to live,” Jack overheard one of them in passing once.

The biotic looked Shep’s body over, locking her eyes on his left hand resting on the covers. It was hooked to many IVs, and the number of tubes and wires was almost enough to cover all of it.

Jack leaned in and brushed her fingers along Shepard’s, delicately, almost with reverence.

The skin had a harsh, almost dry texture.

Her stomach did a cartwheel at the touch. She cursed herself out soundlessly. This was hardly the time.

Jack stared at the unmoving man, the places where the blanket thrown over him dipped unnaturally where his arm and legs should be, and her heart began welling up with regret at all the times she was harsh to him and rejected his friendship. She had her reasons, sure, but in hindsight, most of them seemed very stupid and childish.

Maybe it was her students making her soft or maybe she simply cared about Shepard more than she wanted to admit.

As she was getting up to leave, a movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention.

She flipped her head around.

For a moment, there was nothing. And then…

Shepard’s fingers twitched.

…

_His mind is in a fog, his eyes refuse to catch focus. He’s running, but it’s like moving through a vat of honey._

_Mars._

_Kaidan is on the ground, surrounded by the remains of a burning shuttle._

_He has to get to him, to save him, but he knows he doesn’t have much time._

_Every step is slower than the next, the more he wants to run the less he can move, and he wants to scream for help but his mouth seems taped shut._

_He knows he won’t make it._

_He finally drops to his knees next to Kaidan. He knows he has to take his helmet off, see if he’s alive, he knows this will save him. He fumbles with the locks, his fingers going limp, refusing to listen to him._

_He’s dead, he’s dead, no, come on, he can’t be._

_He rips the helmet off, oh please, please, Kaidan, look at me, but there is no Kaidan._

_The face of the Illusie man stares back at him, cybernetic eyes, wide, too perfect smile, and he laughs, laughs loud and menacing, looking down on Shepard’s efforts._

_“You can’t save them all,” he says in Anderson’s voice and then everything falls apart into millions of pieces, taking him somewhere._

_His vision blurs and he blinks a few times to regain sight._

_He’s on Palaven’s moon, looking at a battlefield from above. Brutes and cannibals swarm the area, Turians trying to take back their camp in a last, desperate stand._

_He can see a familiar silhouette, no, it can’t be, but it’s so clear, Garrus stands in the middle of the battlefield, rallying troops, screaming something in his language._

_The shrieks fill the air._

_A Brute makes its way towards Garrus and the Turian doesn’t notice. Shepard wants to scream to help, to warn him, but he can’t say a word. He wants to help but he’s floating and can’t reach the ground._

_The brute crouches, lunges and is all over Garrus in no time, and just as Shepard’s vision was hazy before, now it’s clear. He doesn’t want to see but he can’t look away._

_The shrieks take on a different tone and then it’s all over._

_He’s in a room with James, being attacked by banshees and husks._

_A threat of a radioactive spill looms over their heads, almost palpable._

_“Go, James!” he hears his own voice, confident and commanding, and yet he feels so weak and unimportant._

_James runs towards the valve, ready to twist it, but something happens, something goes wrong._

_Shepard whips his head around, feeling like he’s in a vat of honey again, just to see how the radioactive sludge spills out and covers James completely. There is no screaming, just the hissing sound of the boiling substance and then Shepard’s vision fades again. He doesn't want to go, he needs to help James, but he can’t, his mind is already somewhere else._

_He’s standing over a Prothean criopod._

_He knows who he’ll find inside._

_He reaches for the hatches of the ancient coffin._

_Come on, Javik, you’ll help me, I need help, my friends are dead, the galaxy is burning, I need you, but as he opens the casket, there is nobody inside._

_ He knows he won’t find help here._

_He slips and then his feet hit the ground of a planet._

_Rannoch._

_The sharp air hits his nostrils, smells of cinnamon and dry soil._

_Tali stands before him, a giant reaper looming in the background, readying a deadly beam._

_Shepard is holding a device in his hands, he has to point it at the reaper, but Tali is standing there and he can’t do it._

_“Tali, move!” he screams, but she just looks at him, shakes her head and turns around, ready to face the reaper._

_There is a flash, a sight of her body disintegrating in a beam of light and then it’s all over. A deafening scream dies on his lips before it has the chance to exit his throat completely._

_The image of Thessia appears before his eyes._

_A gaping hole in the floor of the temple appears._

_He sees Liara running towards him, eyes wide with terror as the ground begins falling away beneath her feet._

_He can catch her, he knows it, he leaps forward, outstretching his hand but he’s not fast enough, he’s never fast enough, and the Asari falls, plummets to the depths of the chasm, silent, disappointed._

_He falls to his knees._

_They hit the deck of the Normandy, a Cerberus base catching the light of a nearby star in full view._

_“Let’s finish this,” he hears himself say, voice rough, stained with sorrow and weariness. EDI nods and says something, but he’s not listening, or maybe can’t hear her._

_The Illusive man appears before him suddenly. Shepard wants to reach for his gun but it’s not there, he must have dropped it. The Illusive man smiles, laughs and shows a remote he’s holding._

_“There is no escape,” he speaks, his voice distant, as if he was really far away. Then he presses the button._

_Next to him, EDI falls to the ground, her cybernetic body unmoving, and Shepard hears an explosion in the background. He knows the Normandy just went up in flames._

_The anger brings him down to the ground, he wants to leap at the Illusive man but his feet are welded to the ground._

_A flash of the star blinds him._

_He’s sitting down, limbs hurting._

_There’s a presence to his right._

_Anderson._

_He falls until his body hits the surface of the ocean and he can’t swim, he remembers not how to float, so he sinks instead._

_The deep darkness envelops him, the cold seeping into his bones, beckoning, pulling him deeper. Water makes its way into his lungs, his nose, suffocating him._

_A face appears, a familiar one, a man with a buzzcut, tired eyes. Behind them, something else is hidden, something bigger, alien._

_The features morph, coming together to form a face he knows all too well._

_“You have come too far,” his own head speaks with Leviathan’s voice. “You have reached the abyss.”_

_…_

“Nurse!” Jack called out, leaning her head out of Shepard’s room.

His body was twitching in a few places, his heart rate speeding up.

A few people in white lab coats filed into the room, assessing the situation. They were throwing medical terms around, ones Jack couldn’t fully understand.

She felt a pang of anxiety hit her stomach again, but a nurse reassured her quickly.

“He was waking up a little,” she explained, resting a calming had on Jack’s shoulder. “It’s nothing to worry about. He was probably having some dreams, hence the activity. We sedated him a little more, he should be fine now.”

Jack nodded her head at the words, calming down slightly.

As the doctors began walking out of the room, she sat down in her chair again, sighing deeply.

“Sleep, you dumb boy scout,” she snapped at Shepard. “Or I’ll kick your ass back to it.”

Despite being tired, Jack stayed with John a bit longer than usual, making sure he didn’t try any other heroics, so typical for him.

For the next three weeks, however, he remained silent and still.


	15. Chapter 15

_Kaidan_

The Normandy’s crew spent the whole week on the satellite wreckage field, trying to pick apart the machinery to find anything that could help them get off the ground again.

Tali was overseeing the entire operation. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t answer the question present in all their minds, of why were all of these satellites here, but that didn’t spoil her mood. She seemed right in her ballpark, jotting all the findings down on a sheet of paper, humming a cheery tune. When asked about her good mood, she explained that this kind of task reminded her of her days on the Flotilla, where looking for scraps of metal and circuit boards was a day to day affair. Then, her mind must have drifted somewhere unpleasant, because she stopped humming and threw herself even harder at the work. After all, she had no idea what became of the Flotilla or the Geth.

Garrus, James and Javik volunteered for impromptu guard duty. They even sharpened a few pieces of scrap metal, with the Prothean’s directions, to form makeshift spears. Javik called them “Vunkvins” and wielding them looked comical in the times when most wars were waged over long distances, but with all of their weapons fried, they had to make do. It turned out that the Prothean and Liara both could still use their respective versions of biotics. Kaidan’s were still offline and despite feeling almost naked without them, he found some comfort in the thought the crew wasn’t completely defenceless.

The creature that attacked the Major and Kenneth didn’t make an appearance again. Kaidan couldn’t complain.

The work was moving forward at a decent pace. In a few days, the crew has managed to accumulate enough parts for Adams and Gabby to patch the hull and put together a makeshift fix for the Normandy’s main lighting system and water filtration unit. The showers were cold, but at least they could have them again, plus every officer in the Alliance knew that morale began with a fresh supply of even the shttiest coffee so moods soared when the old coffee maker came back to life with a dissatisfied, mechanical grunt.

The drive core, however, remained offline, being a painful reminder that the ship would not be leaving the alien planet anytime soon.

During this stressful time, the more experienced members of the crew would often throw ship-wide get-togethers in the mess hall or observation deck. There’d be cards, reminiscing about the good old times, swapping stories of the different moments the ship was in danger, and remembering what kind of trouble Shepard got them in over the last three years. Even Liara let James pull her into those evenings, and despite being uncomfortable at the start, she opened up quickly and revealed she knew more Shepard stories than many of them, where only Garrus had hear beat.

Nobody talked to Kaidan about coming to one of these evenings openly. He suspected they all felt strange and had no clue how to breach the topic of Shepard around him. Only Garrus, with his usual, concerned, mandible-flaring self approached Alenko one night and hummed softly:

“If you ever need to talk, you’re always welcome to stop by. You know where we are.”

This silent exclusion only meant the crew knew him well and remembered exactly what happened with Kaidan after the first time they lost Shepard. They tried to get him to spill his guts then, and he ended up pushing them all away.

Some tears, but mostly laughter and a silent appreciation of the time they were given aboard the Normandy was the mood present during those crew meetings.

There was also a lot of alcohol drank in John’s name.

Kaidan wouldn’t normally allow it, after all, they were still in a lot of possible danger and he never knew when he’d need the crew on full alert, but Garrus and Tali seemed to keep watch so that everyone was only slightly buzzed at best. Because these were strange times and because the get-togethers boosted the morale, the Major decided to not intervene, so long as nobody drank themselves under the table.

One faithful night, when Kaidan couldn’t sleep and kept tossing around on Shepard’s couch, headache pounding away at his sanity, threatening to turn into a migraine, the Major got up and headed down to the mess hall.

He didn’t dare sleep in John’s bed; it was simply too empty and held too many memories for comfort, but he couldn’t just move back into the crew bunks again after months of living in John’s cabin. Besides, someone had to take care of his fish, and Kaidan was willing to cling to this excuse for as long as he needed to. The aquatic creatures didn’t seem to mind.

With every passing night, he could sleep less and less, his mind running restlessly through scenarios, things he needed to take care of the next day, ways to ensure crew safety. It often made him wonder if that’s how Shepard felt during the war and that in turn made Kaidan feel even worse.

He climbed out of the ladder shaft and crossed the mess hall. It was empty.

So it was the observation deck tonight.

He had done this a couple of times before, walking across the silent ship in the middle of the night, mostly to head to doctor Chakwas’ office for painkillers or something that would knock him out good.

This time, however, something was different.

He didn’t feel like he wanted to just fall asleep.

The Major was tired, more of the constant overthinking than anything else. He knew he could take the sleep deprivation – after all, the Alliance prepared you for it in boot camp, but thinking about John, especially at night, rendered him exhausted emotionally.

He wondered if that’s why the crew deck bustled with the sound of people drinking and reminiscing so often.

Kaidan walked towards the observation deck. The closer he was, the more voices and eruptions of laughter he could hear. As the door swished open, he heard the tail of a story he heard Garrus tell more than once over drinks or coffee.

“The Omega gangs were so perfectly united in trying to take me down that it couldn’t have been infighting. So, I look through my scope and who do I see? Shepard, alive and well, if looking a little rough, tearing through the enemy lines from the back. Just like the good old times! So, he gets up to my spot, still doesn’t know who I am. The look on his face when I took my helmet off will be something I tell my grandchildren about!”

The crew, despite surely having heard the story at least once, laughed unanimously. It could have been the alcohol.

Kaidan leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest, a smirk creeping onto his face.

It was good seeing them all like this – relaxed, happy, having a good time, and leaning on each other for support. He knew this is what Shepard would have wanted.

A few heads turned to him.

“Major!” Gabi called, clearly surprised.

“Good to see you, Kaidan,” Liara’s voice reached him from somewhere to the side. He raised a calming hand at them.

“Don’t mind me, just stopping by.”

Engineer Adams, who was standing next to the far right wall, rummaging through a locker box he had with him, handed Kaidan a drink. It was cold and smelled like cheap whiskey but he was grateful.

“Anyway, where was I?” Garrus said, bringing everyone’s attention to himself again. He continued telling his story, even stood up and started gesturing wildly where the gunship flew in and began shooting at them. The turian displayed his scars with pride, making James yell a hearty “get outta here” from the poker table, where doctor Chakwas was crushing him at cards.

As Garrus sat down, a silent appreciation fell onto the crew.

Kaidan sipped his drink, looking forward into space with unseeing eyes, feeling the warmth of alcohol spread across his body. It would seem that without his amp and the heightened metabolism it carried with it, alcohol was getting to him faster.

The conversations picked up after a short while. It was mostly talks of family and friends they haven’t seen in a while and even Kaidan got pulled into it. Adams asked him about the state of his family and somehow coerced him into explaining the structure of their orchard and brewery business.

“To all of those who lost their better halves in this bloody war!” Samantha choked out after a while, raising her tall, thing glass in an attempt at a toast. She seemed pretty drunk. “Kaidan, Steve,” she nodded to each respectively. Her eyes snapped to the pilot. “Joker.”

Jeff looked perplexed.

“Why me?” He asked, sounding genuinely lost.

“Well, you know,” Samantha slurred. “EDI. Sorry,” she grimaced at her own words. She was usually more tactful than this.

“What about her?” Sam’s words didn’t seem to clarify anything for him. “Sure, she’s gone now, but that’s just a phase. She’ll be back when we restore main power to the ship and the AI core, right?” He chuckled nervously.

Samatha stared at the inside of her glass like it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen, swishing the contents around mindlessly.

“Right,” she nodded. “It’s just, we don’t know if, you know-”

“Samantha,” Kaidan spat. The situation was horrid. It was like a train crash – horrible, burning, and he couldn’t look away. Nor could he do anything to stop it.

Her eyes snapped to the Major in the same moments as Joker’s.

“Oh,” she said, realizing she gave away more than she should have. She went back to studying her glass. “Sorry.”

“If what?” the pilot pressed. Kaidan kicked himself mentally.

“Joker, just drop it,” the Major said, rubbing his temples with his fingers. His headache was getting worse. He really didn’t want Joker knowing about any of this.

“Drop what?” Joker said, voice getting less and less amused by the second. He didn’t look too sober either.

Kaidan pulled his lips into a thin line and looked away, closing his eyes and letting a frustrated puff of air out through his nose. He pinched its bridge between his fingers and sighed.

“I didn’t want you finding out like this,” he explained.

Joker looked perplexed and somewhat pissed.

“Look, I don’t care what it is, or how it is, just say it.” His tone was insistent.

Samantha looked at Kaidan with panicked eyes.

“Major, I-”

He stopped her with a gesture.

“Look,” the Major said with a resigned sigh, looking into Joker’s eyes. “This isn’t the best place to talk.”

The pilot’s face twisted in a grimace.

“Whatever you say will make the rounds anyway,” he spat. “If it concerns EDI, it concerns me, now spit. It. Out.”

Kaidan opened his mouth and was about to deny again, but Samantha beat him to it.

“The AI core sustained heavy damage. We don’t know if it reset, broke or is just dormant. We have no clue what form EDI will come back in if at all,” she sped through the explanation with a shaking voice. “I’m sorry, Joker,” she added, looking between him and Kaidan.

Joker’s eyes widened in disbelief, a sneer stuck frozen on his lips, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“How long have you known this?” He almost whispered.

“Almost as long as we’ve been here,” Samantha sank into her seat even more, raising her hands to her face, as if the glass she was holding was supposed to shield her from guilt.

Joker drew a shaking breath in. He turned to the Major, a face of rage painting ridges into his features.

“And you planned to tell me when exactly?” He asked, his voice strained.

Kaidan held his stare, despite the incredible desire to look down at the floor in shame.

He didn’t want Joker to be hurt by this information. He wanted to tell him delicately, spare his pain, let him hope. He sure as hell didn’t want him finding out this way.

“I didn’t want…” he sighed again, the right words evading him. “I knew how you’d feel and-”

Joker cut him off.

“Yea, well, you know jackshit.”

The Major stared at him in dumbfounded disbelief, as did the rest of the crew. The first pangs of anger began waking up in Kaidan’s mind, mixing with his headache and shortening his patience.

“I didn’t want you hurt, Joker,” he said, brow pulled into a frown. “I know how stressed you were after Alchera and didn’t want you going through that again.”

Before he could apologize, Joker stood up from his seat.

He was shaking slightly and Kaidan suspected it wasn’t simply due to his disability. The pilot was red on his face both from the alcohol he had so far and fury.

“You weren’t there!” He screamed, balling his hands into fists, an internal dam holding his emotions in check breaking. “You don’t know what it was like!”

Kaidan felt himself get angrier. He tried his best to stay focused, to not snap back at Joker, doing all the breathing and calming exercises they taught him at BAaT. The corner of his mouth was twitching with annoyance.

“After the Commander died the first time, how fast did you pick up your stuff and leave?” Joker continued his screaming, saliva flying from his mouth. He was taking shaky steps forward, gradually getting closer and closer to Kaidan. The crew froze in a mortified shock.

“You were gone, and you didn’t care what happened to the rest of the crew! You took your sweet ass time and ignored everybody like we never existed! You didn’t care we missed him too!”

Tears began gathering in the corners of Joker’s eyes. He was close enough to Kaidan for it to be uncomfortable and he was looking up at him, yelling in his face. The Major remained silent.

“You gave no fucks about how we felt back then. And after he came back?” Joker laughed, his voice taking on a tone of hysterics. “You weren’t there to help him, didn’t see him drinking himself half to death looking at a picture of you, you weren’t the one who had to watch him because he was more stressed-out than ever before! You didn’t even let him explain!”

“Joker…” Vega said quietly from the back of the room. Joker’s head snapped back.

“Let me fucking finish!” He yelled. Nobody intervened.

Joker turned around to face Kaidan again. He pointed an accusatory finger at the Major’s chest.

“If we weren’t stuck here, you’d disappear again.” He said, quieter now, but still with just as much venom present in his voice. “You’re so stuck in your moping you can’t even fathom that we lost him too. And that for a lot of us, he’s not the only person we’ve lost.”

Kaidan remained perfectly still. The only part of him that revealed how angry and hurt he was were his tight pulled brows.

“I know how you feel, Joker,” he rasped.

That seemed to piss off the flight lieutenant even more.

“You have no idea how I feel,” he spat.

He walked past Kaidan, directing his steps out of the observation deck, fuming, making sure not to bump into the Major. If he could, he surely would have, but having vrolik syndrome meant he was more likely to break his collar bone than hurt Kaidan.

Very soon after, the rest of the crew began filing out of the mess hall, heading towards the crew bunks. None of them said anything but the tension in the air was practically palpable.

Kaidan went back to Shepard’s cabin and didn’t sleep at all.

When the first, ship-wide alarm sounded, he was already down in the mess hall, standing over the coffee machine, waiting for Joker to leave the crew quarters.

The Major felt stupid for what he said the previous evening, and, in general, for what he’s been saying and doing around Joker since they crashed here.

He wanted to apologize, say he knew he should have been honest, and that he knew that through wanting to spare Joker what he himself felt so often as of late, he made it even worse for the pilot.

The crew began filing out of the quarters one by one and heading to get some breakfast before their duties.

Most looked tired, some seemed hungover. Kaidan didn’t comment.

They nodded at Alenko with respect while walking past him, some even said something akin to _“Good morning, Major.”_

After a while, Kaidan spotted Samantha.

Her walk was spry and pace quick. Her brow was drawn in and her forehead wrinkled as if she was thinking about something intensely. Her eyes kept darting between the different crew members. After a short while, she made her way to the main ladder shaft, ignoring breakfast.

Kaidan felt confusion mixed with a pang of worry at her strange behaviour but didn’t stop her. He knew that if she deemed it important, she’d get back to him on it.

He sighed, took a sip of his terrible coffee, and resumed waiting for Joker, mentally preparing himself for whatever it was Samantha seemed to be worried about.

Some five minutes later she barreled down the ladder shaft with an alarmed expression on her face. Kaidan jumped up to her immediately.

“What’s going on?” He asked immediately, grabbing her by the shoulders.

Samantha’s eyes snapped to the Major. She looked… scared.

“It’s Joker,” she said, voice hoarse from sleep. “He’s… gone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!  
Another chapter, eh? Been a while. Had to graduate college in the meantime and I apologize for the wait.  
This chapter was a little hard to write and I apologize for this horrid cliffhanger, I can't get the next chapter out the door fast enough. I promise it'll be here in a flash!  
I hope you enjoyed and stay tuned for the rest of the fic! We're 3/4 of the way there :D


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